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The Telecom Digest for March 6, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 57 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Verizon Outages Strand Lower Manhattan Businesses 4 Months After Sandy (Wes Leatherock)
Re: Verizon Outages Strand Lower Manhattan Businesses 4 Months After Sandy (danny burstein)
White House: It's Time to Legalize Cellphone Unlocking (Bill Horne)
Smart Phones (Rich Braun)

====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2013 07:31:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Outages Strand Lower Manhattan Businesses 4 Months   After Sandy
Message-ID: <1362497462.10013.YahooMailClassic@web125202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>

--- On Mon, 3/4/13, Mark Smith <marklsmith@yahoo.com> wrote:

> In the boonies of Southern Maryland, one restaurant still has the
> credit card machine attached to the voice (POTS) line. If anyone is
> gabbing one the phone the machine won't work.

    It's not just in the boonies.  Lots of small businesses don't want
to pay for an extra phone line of any sort.  This happens im doctors'
offices and some small retail stores, too.

Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com




Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2013 17:06:28 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Outages Strand Lower Manhattan Businesses 4 Months  After Sandy
Message-ID: <kh58mk$74h$1@reader1.panix.com>

In <1362497462.10013.YahooMailClassic@web125202.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com> writes:

>    It's not just in the boonies.  Lots of small businesses don't want
>to pay for an extra phone line of any sort.  This happens im doctors'
>offices and some small retail stores, too.

Many of those places also have a fax machine. I've saved a bunch of
them money by explaining they can hook up their credit card
dialer-outer onto the fax machine phone line (which, for most of them,
is minimally used).

-- 
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
                    dannyb@panix.com 
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]




Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:10:21 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: White House: It's Time to Legalize Cellphone Unlocking 
Message-ID: <kh5qdp$s79$1@dont-email.me>

White House: It's Time to Legalize Cellphone Unlocking

MARCH 4, 2013 AT 10:13 AM PT

The White House on Monday came out in support of the rights of consumers 
to unlock their cellphones once they have fulfilled the terms of the 
contract.

Responding to a petition on WhiteHouse.gov, the executive branch stated, 
"The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that 
consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking 
criminal or other penalties."

http://allthingsd.com/20130304/white-house-its-time-to-legalize-cell-phone-unlocking/

-or-

http://goo.gl/FmBbB

-- 
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)




Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:52:55 -0500
From: Rich Braun <richb.remove-this@and-this-too.pioneer.ci.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Smart Phones
Message-ID: <51365B27.4080900@horne.net>

Moderator's note: I copied this post from another forum I read, with
the kind permssion of Mr. Braun.

> (Another person on the forum) wrote:
>  The costs of smart phones are ridiculous.

 I saw the Obama administration weighed in on one aspect of
 affordability this week: after another government agency declared
 that lawsuits by carriers against consumers who unlock their
 under-contract phones can go forward, the Administration accepted an
 online petition protesting such policy and declared that such
 lawsuits are lunacy. Net effect: zero.

 Sometime last year a major news organization (I think it was ABC)
 announced that the build cost of an iPhone is US$8, which if true
 means the markup is over 98% of the inflated price. Last week's Time
 magazine devoted its entire news section to a single 24,000-word
 piece about the so-called chargemaster, which is the computerized
 price list used by hospitals to compute bills.

 Welcome to the modern price-gouging economy. Profiteers are finding
 ways to corner many markets and jack up prices by ensuring that
 consumers pay for things indirectly, blunting the effects of
 comparison-shopping.

 If you want better/cheaper mobile phones and service, alas you have
 to escape the boundaries of the USA to get beyond the reach of
 profiteers.

 -rich






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