---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <n9occ1$4p0$1@dont-email.me> Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2016 17:59:58 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: CenturyLink joins Comcast in bringing data caps to home internet By Jacob Kastrenakes Data caps have become an accepted part of getting internet access on your phone, and now caps are slowly starting to make their way into the world of home internet, too. Comcast, AT&T, and some other smaller internet providers either test data caps or have them in active use, and this week CenturyLink – home to just over 6 million broadband providers – said that it's looking into using data caps, too. "Our competition is using metered plans today," said Stewart Ewing, CenturyLink's chief financial officer, during an earnings call this week. "And we think it's an area we have to explore and consider." Ewing added that CenturyLink intends to start trials, likely later this year. For the most part, we haven't seen major home broadband providers going all in on data caps. Comcast, for instance, has been rolling them out city by city as it looks to see how they perform. While it could lead to cheaper internet access for those who don't do much on their computers, it's concerning for the same reason that data caps have always been concerning on mobile. Data caps may look reasonable today, but later they might impair the rollout of data heavy services like 4K streaming or the development of other services that would require similarly huge amounts of data. You probably don't want to be watching another data meter every month, but ISPs might just make that happen. http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/12/10981288/centurylink-to-test-data-caps -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <n9od1v$bbk$1@dont-email.me> Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2016 18:11:40 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else By QUENTIN HARDY DALLAS - Thirty-four years ago, Kevin Stephenson got his younger brother, Randall, a job with the telephone company. Kevin, then 23, and Randall, 22, had tried selling cattle feed with their father near their home in Moore, Okla., but that didn't pan out. Kevin was hired to do accounting at a local Southwestern Bell office. Randall, who was in college, needed a bit more help. "He had trouble getting hired," Kevin said. "I talked to someone I knew in personnel." The brothers had different tastes. Kevin liked to be outside, and now, at 57 years old, he works in Norman, Okla., fixing the decades-old copper lines that still connect to landline telephones in most homes as well as to modern Internet conduits like high-speed fiber optics. Randall liked numbers and stayed indoors, rising through the management ranks. http://www.nytimes.com -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <33D53079-0B43-4A07-886F-2B867EDAD839@roscom.com> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 20:28:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: And Then There Were Four: Phone Booths Saved on Upper West Side Sidewalks The boxy, glass-enclosed booths that were once ubiquitous on city sidewalks are all but a memory now - except for the four that are being replaced by refurbished models. A work crew pulled up to the northwest corner of West End Avenue and 101st Street on Wednesday morning and approached an oblong glass box that looked so anachronistic that a passer-by might have wondered if it simply had dropped out of the sky. It was a walk-in phone booth, of the sort that Clark Kent might have dashed into, only to come out dressed as Superman. Even with its graffitied glass, rusted metal panels and a missing door long ago ripped off its hinges, the booth's pay phone still functioned. http://www.nytimes.com ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sun, 14 Feb 2016