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The Telecom Digest for August 15, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 173 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 15:56:34 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <kug9bi$1vbt$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <MPG.2c735fe6509c8bc1989e83@news.eternal-september.org>,
T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net> wrote:
>In article <ku74qr$1m9k$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>,
>wollman@bimajority.org says...
>>
>> Can you or anyone else explain, by the way, why cablecos put the HD
>> versions of various services (both local and national programming) on
>> different "channel" numbers from the downconverted SD versions?
>> [Moderator snip]
>
>In Cox land the HD channels of popular lower channels are just 1000
>+channel number. For example, ABC6 is 0006 for SD, but 1006 for HD.
Sure, and for Verizon it's 700 and for Comcast it's 800, but that's
stupid, and that's what I was asking for an explanation of. There's
no obvious reason to have separate channel numbers at all. (Separate
program streams, yes, but not separate consumer-visible channel
numbers.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 16:00:52 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <kug9jk$1vbt$2@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <046e485f-53a5-4f87-80e7-6e7b6bb08fc8@googlegroups.com>,
Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> wrote:
>> [I wrote:]
>> Um, this is exactly what my TiVo does. It has two RF inputs, one for
>> an antenna and one for cable, with the requisite CableCARD slots and a
>> USB connection for SDV. Because I don't have reliable OTA reception
>> where I live, I usually have the broadcast channels disabled, but I
>> configure my TiVo to think I have an antenna, so that I can switch
>> over in just these sorts of cases.
>
>Does "I can switch over in just these sorts of cases" mean that you have to
>take some separate action (such as pushing a different button on the remote)
>to make the switch?
It means that I would have to enable the OTA channels that I have
previously disabled. If you select the "CATV+OTA" option during
setup, TiVo enables both by default -- although of course the OTA
channel numbers likely won't match up with the cable channel numbers,
particularly for DTV subchannels. (TiVo also assumes that you can
receive all of the DTV signals in your DMA, which is unlikely to be
true for anyone in market #6 but may be true elsewhere.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 22:10:18 -0400
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <MPG.2c735f982a9dd655989e82@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <1tvyxmqj93j1u.f1mh7qkn92p6.dlg@40tude.net>,
mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net says...
>
> On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 22:15:52 -0400, Telco Guy offered his ... :
>
> > ... impression that ... households that have no sports fans and
> > live in urban areas served with many terrestrial TV stations have a
> > greatly reduced reason to subscribe to cable or satellite TV. ...
>
> No sports fans here. Nor MTV fans, nor fans of much else that has lots
> of fans. But we are fans of CNN and BBC, and those seem to be
> available (to us, at least) only through a "premium" $30/mo. add-on
> bundle to a "basic" $70/mo. cable subscription -- not available
> OTA. FWIW.
Wow, and I thought I was getting ripped off paying $93 a month for
Advanced Cable TV. I'm almost at the point of telling Cox to stuff it.
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 12:02:55 -0400
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: MetroPCS 4G Service Issues
Message-ID: <MPG.2c75743a8c6207ab989e87@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <1wrj7bztdtifn$.1bkuralxl32x5$.dlg@40tude.net>,
mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net says...
>
> On Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:59:38 -0400, T wrote:
>
> > So this past week my Samsung SCH-R910 started exhibiting odd behavior.
> > Voice calls would not work. But SMS and net services all worked just fine.
> >
> > Finally a few hours later the phone started working again and SMS and
> > net services too.
> >
> > Then I get one of Metro's sneak voicemails saying I should bring my
> > phone in for a firmware upgrade. It went from v2.2.1 to v2.2.2. Now
> > knowing what firmware is, they upgraded the RF chip software.
> >
> > Now the phone and SMS work but no 4G service whatsoever from the very
> > same location. ...
>
> MetroPCS is the outfit that's "merging" with T-Mobile? Maybe teething
> problems. Earlier this week, my local T-Mobile service tower was out all
> day during most of the business hours of Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday.
> Speaking with T-Mo CS reps (over a landline connection, of course :-) )
> each of those mornings, I was asked every time to go through the
> by-now-standard "shut off the phone, remove the back, take out the battery,
> read me the IMEI, replace the battery, restore the back, and turn on the
> phone" routine that their script mandates, and, when that changed not a
> thing, I got transferred one level up, where an agent checked their outages
> map and determined that my nearest tower was "undergoing maintenance."
>
> Dandy. But by 2:30, or 3:30, or 5:30 pm each afternoon, service was back to
> normal ... only to be broken again the next morning. Thursday, though, and
> again today, no such problems ... just service as usual.
>
> Can this all be the result of trying to weave together the two formerly
> disparate (but now merged) services of T-Mo and MetroPCS?
>
> And why on earth, after I tell them I'm just calling to learn the status of
> the maintenance on my local service tower, must the answer-droids on the
> front line waste my time and theirs on that "read me the IMEI" foolishness?
> With T-Mo for over a decade, I know the first thing to try if service is
> problematic is to switch the phone off, in hopes that a fresh association
> with the tower will improve matters :-) .
>
> (At least none of them tried to convince me, as two did a month ago when
> similar no-voice/no-data problems were plaguing me, that it was my "old SIM
> card that's worn out" that I need to replace at my "local T-Mobile store.")
>
> Cheers, -- tlvp
It's because the engineering groups don't communicate with the customer
service groups. Therefore the droids on the CS side can't do much else
than record your gripes and potentially files a ticket with the
technical side.
>From what I read though they don't plan to integrate the two. However
they do say they'll be making massive upgrades to both systems. So we'll
see what holds for the future.
I strongly suspect when push comes to shove I'll end up on the T-Mobil
side which is an interesting to me since I was once an OmniPoint
customer, then VoiceStream, and T-Mobil customer before going to
MetroPCS.
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