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The Telecom Digest for February 23, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 51 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Supermarket shop by mobile phone
Message-ID: <1329922805.25231.YahooMailClassic@web111716.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
--- On Tue, 2/21/12, Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
> I don't know if Touch-Tone phones were originally intended to give
> customers the ability to interact with automaticc response systems,
> but they weren't adopted as quickly as was hoped: I think local LEC
> customers didn't see the signalling capability as an advantage worth
> paying for, and some might have shied away from automated systems
> that depended on Touch-Tone because they didn't want to lose the
> human touch that they enjoyed with the old system. It's also
> possible that customers thought that they would have to surrender
> all their phones, including the millions of unauthorized
> extensions which still had dials on them. I'm always fascinated by
> people's reactions to new technology, both positive and negative, so
> I'd like to hear from others who have better information about this.
End-to-end signalling was touted from the beginning as a greart
advantage of Touch Tone, although some of the ramifications of this
did not appear for many years.
I remember cordless phones, some of them provided by telcos, that had
a switch for tone or pulse and instuctions on how to switch between
them if you had rotary dial service (for calling) but wanted to use
some sort of tone response sysrtem.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:58:56 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: credit cards, was: Supermarket shop by mobile phone
Message-ID: <ji1i50$5hg$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <d8157b84-7d5b-493d-84e7-b3d0d378ee7e@l14g2000vbe.googlegroups.com> HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes:
>I'm not sure when this happened, but to me the big change was when
>credit card companies accepted a telephone submitted credit card order
>(1980s?). Well before the Internet was commonplace companies had 800
>order lines. At that point, for the consumer, the transaction was
>effortless. Consumers didn't only use catalogs, but also ads from
>magazines.
When I was working retail in a small store 1970ish, we usually
took a physical card (using the carbon imprinter...) but we
could also take telephone orders. We simply handwrote the
person's name in the signature line, with a "t/o" (for "telephone
order") next to it.
However, the big time issue was that we had to check each
card against a very big pamphlet with very teensy type, that
was updated each week... If the sale was over fifty dollars,
we also had to call in to the card company for validation and
get a ticket number.
- In the late 1970s online terminals came into use at the
larger retail stores, and presumably the call centers.
And then, bit by bit, the time and effort got to be less
and less...
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:08:54 -0800 (PST)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Supermarket shop by mobile phone
Message-ID: <1329923334.65934.YahooMailClassic@web111712.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
--- On Tue, 2/21/12, David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com> wrote:
> I don't know, fifteen years of selling groceries online seems to be
> enough to say if they're going to manage to succeed. Peapod are a
> subsidery of Royal Ahold, a Dutch supermarket congolmerate. Ahold
> owns both Giant and Stop & Shop.
In the days when grocery delivery was common. you had to leave
your door unlocked or have a maid or other attendant. Many foods are
perishable and can't just be dumped on the front porch. There also
had to be someone to pay the delivery person unless credit was
extended.
When I was growing up my mother ordered groceries (there were two
deliveries a day) and the delivery person came around to the back and
brought them right into the kitchen.
Another product was milk, almost always delivered. You could pick a
time you wanted it delievered (at two hour intervals, as I recall) and
at one time there were six different dairies calling on us for their
business in Oklahoma City (I believe not quite that many in St. Louis
and I don't remember how many in Dallas).
Now there are no milk delivery men and no grocers that deliver.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:32:29 -0500
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Supermarket shop by mobile phone
Message-ID: <bnb6zmsky00l.1jure3sadlkuh$.dlg@40tude.net>
On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:13:07 -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
> It remains to be seen if Peapod (offered by Stop & Shop in my area)
> will be able to leverage the public's experience buying packaged goods
> in order to sell groceries: since nobody cares which bottle of soap
> they buy, Peapod is hoping that they won't care which melon or tomato
> or ear of corn is delivered.
The people buying shoes (Zappos) and clothing (Lands End, LL Bean) over the
internet may have no qualms either about buying meats, peaches, and melons.
But those of us who know that sizes are unreliable guides to how well a
given pair of shoes (or slacks, or jeans) will fit will continue to shop in
a store only, and will take the same approach to meat, fish, and produce.
PeaPod's $10 delivery fee (here in CT, anyway), and the expectation that
consumers will tip delivery agents, are apt to slow adoption rates down.
Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:21:55 -0500
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Supermarket shop by mobile phone
Message-ID: <132xliqro26zq.1mtidimb68yzj.dlg@40tude.net>
On Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:13:07 -0500, Bill Horne wrote, of Touch-Tone phones:
> ... weren't adopted as quickly as was hoped: I think local LEC
> customers didn't see the signalling capability as an advantage worth
> paying for ...
"An extra 5 or 7 bucks a month to save 5 or 7 seconds of dialing time?"
folks thought, "Ya gotta be kidding!" I remember: I was one of them.
And later, when it was learned that DTMF would save Ma Bell money as
compared with pulse dialing, folks thought, "You should pay us to switch
to DTMF, not the other way around!" And I was one of those, too :-) .
Ultimately, Ma Bell gave in, and just made everything both pulse and DTMF
dial responsive, at no extra monthly charge.
Cheers, -- tlvp
- -
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
***** Moderator's Note *****
I'd really like to know if Touch-Tone was intended to be used for IVR
access when it was on the drawing board. I always thought it was
invented in order to cut down on local cable costs, i.e., to make it
possible to use Voice Frequency repeaters and thinner wire.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:35:21 -0600
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Supermarket shop by mobile phone
Message-ID: <QrmdndVdePfk_9nSnZ2dnUVZ_o2dnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <20120221213426.GB30384@telecom.csail.mit.edu>,
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 09:03:03PM +0000, David Scheidt wrote:
>> Bill Horne <bill@horneqrm.net> wrote:
>>
>> :It remains to be seen if Peapod (offered by Stop & Shop in my area)
>> :will be able to leverage the public's experience buying packaged goods
>> :in order to sell groceries: since nobody cares which bottle of soap
>> :they buy, Peapod is hoping that they won't care which melon or tomato
>> :or ear of corn is delivered.
>>
>> I don't know, fifteen years of selling groceries online seems to be
>> enough to say if they're going to manage to succeed. Peapod are a
>> subsidery of Royal Ahold, a Dutch supermarket congolmerate. Ahold
>> owns both Giant and Stop & Shop.
>
>I don't know how well Peapod is doing in the market, but (as I wrote
>before), I'd like to know what factors work against it and for it. My
>questions cover several areas:
[sneck]
Peapod was founded in Chicago in the '90s. Primarily web-based ordering.
(also telephone-orders to a live rep -- who was just using the web-form
for you -- with an additional surcharge. this has, i believe been dropped)
Actual purchasing was executed through a large Chicago-area grocery chain
(Jewel Osco). The route driver would go to a 'local' (to where he was
delivering), Jewel, with a 'consolidated' shopping list, and grab however
many of 'whatever' he needed to fill his shopping list. Then wheel the
carts out to the parking lot, and sort stuff out of the carts, and into
tubs for the individual customers. Then, off to each address to deliver
the orders. Special space on board for handling frozen and/or refrigerated
items.
In the early days they were almost exclusively residential delivery.
They subsequently expanded to other areas in the region served by Jewel.
They were successful/profitable enough that they were acquired by a major
Dutch grocer. And, oddly enough, shifted to using their warehousing/
distribution.
Produce is, and has been "pot luck", they're buying/distributing enough
that they can't "cherry pick" like many retail customers do. So, somebody
ends up with the 'choice' heads of lettuce from the crate, and somebody
else gets the left-overs. They make a reasonable effort to rotate who is
where on the fulfillment cycle, so that the same customers don't regularly
get either the choice items -or- the left-overs.
They've also expanded into 'business' delivery -- this includes both
commercial restaurants, and businesses tha just need 'goodies' for a
meeting.
They've been constantly -- albeit in a controlled manner, and at a restrained
pace -- expanding their service area. They presently cover a large part
of the nation.
>accept a faceless transaction over the traditional supermarket? The
>prices weren't that different from the market, and considering the
>price of gas and value of my time, I thought the charges were
>reasonable for my order. What makes the average buyer willing to pick
>up the phone instead of the car keys?
The short answer is 'convenience' -- you can search stuff on the web-
site a lot faster than you can go down the isles in the store; you can
keep 'saved lists' of stuff you purchase regularly, with a 'one click'
add of the entire list. If you're not near a 24-hour store, you can
still -place- an order 24-hours/day.
For 'routine' shopping purchases -- an 'established' shopping list of
goods, it's only a few minutes (at most) online to place the order and
schedule the delivery. And maybe 5 minutes when the delivery arrives.
Compare that to 10-15 minutes or more (door-to-door) each way with a car,
20+ minutes going through the store, 5 minutes or so for check-out, plus
the time to load the groceries into the car. and it can be a -big- time-
saver.
Consider a stay-at-home mom, with young kids, who's husband is out-of-town
for whatever reason -- she's either going to have to get a sitter, or bundle
the kids of to the store with her. Online ordering/delivery begins to look
like a -real- bargain.
And then there are the 'snobs' -- who'd prefer not to mingle with the
'great unwashed' at the local supermarket. :)
lots of reasons. grin
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:01:46 -0600 (CST)
From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: How does a "Trunked" line between two 5ESS CO's work?
Message-ID: <201202221601.q1MG1kRo023355@mail.r-bonomi.com>
In article <20120220142343.GA20847@telecom.csail.mit.edu>,
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 07:01:15AM -0000, John Levine wrote:
>
>> I concur with the people who suggest porting the number to a VoIP
>> carrier who doesn't care where your VoIP box is. My "portable" number
>> is a little box with an Ethernet plug on one side and a phone plug on
>> the other. It has an Ithaca NY number but it spent a pleasant year in
>> England, same number, worked fine.
>
>This leads me to a question about the future, and I'm not sure that I
>know how to ask it clearly, so please bear with me.
>
>I wonder, given that the VoIP an Cellular systems are gradually
>divorcing exchange codes from "their" rate centers, at what point the
>existing "V&H" billing concept will break down?
"never." <grin>
What will happen is that it will become more and more 'irrelevant' ad
'immaterial' to most people's use.
Say that someone is using their Los Angeles Cell phone in NYC.
Now postulate that somebody on a NYC landline calls that cell phone.
It goes via the -caller's- choice of IXC to the 'home' exchange of
that cell phone -- in L.A. -- with the caller paying for all that mileage,
per V&H for, the origin/destination call centers. Then it hops on the
callee's network, and is backhauled over that carrier's private network
to "wherever' the callee happens to actually be. At no additional cost
to the either the caller or the callee. The 'private network' costs are
covered by the -fixed- access/connectivity fee charged to the customer.
"private peering agreements" with -direct- connections between various
wireless providers -- and no 'usage-based' "settlements -- allows the
wireless providers to bypass the usage-based "settlement" cost calculations,
and allows wireless providers to offer 'no additional cost' calling to
-other- wireless providers customers as well as for 'on-net' terminations.
V&H still exists, but it is simply 'irrelevant and immaterial' for these
calls.
>So, here's the question: will some other method of distance-sensitive
>billing take the place of V&H?
Nope. When the pricing model for the -underlying- transport is "distance
insensitive', and is entirely paid for by fixed 'access' charges, then
'distance sensitive' billing is effectively rendered obsolete for calls
over that transport.
>And, come to think of it, is the V&H concept so ingrained in the
>network's design that it can't be replaced?
V&H _is- ingrained in the existing wireline billing model because of the
requirement to 'share' the per call revenues among the various carriers'
that handle parts of the call, IXC compensation is based on the 'miles'
that the IXC carries the call. `
> I think cell plans come
>with long distance service included because the cellular providers
>realized that it costs more to bill for it than to provide it as part
>of a monthly package,
Also, 'distance-based' billing gets -insanely- complicated, when either
party is not at a fixed location. How do you handle the billing when
the call changes from 'intra-LATA' to 'inter-LAT', or 'in-state' to 'inter-
state', or vice versa? How about 'local' to 'international'?
Having to add all those complications to the existing billing and, yeah,
the cost of distance based billing exceeds any reasonable revenues.
> but will the costs of providing it ever return
>to a distance-based model?
As the billing model changes -- as it -has- with most wireless and VoIP
service -- and where there is a fixed charge for 'connectivity' and
(maybe) a minimal per-minute charge for handling the 'last-mile' for
calls that terminate 'off network', V&H simply becomes increasingly
irrelevant for 'alternative' provider services.
The likelihood of providers being able to 'sell' a return to distance-based
pricing to customers is 'improbable', at best.
Robert Bonomi
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