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| From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: The Telecom Digest <majordomo@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Cellular Monopoly areas
I just finished a working vacation in North Carolina, and
I was very surprised to find out that certain areas
of the state have, for practical purposes, only one
cellular provider.
I spent a lot of time in the area around Burnsville, looking
for a home my wife and I can retire in, and although my
Tracphone would work more-or-less "OK" inside the city limits,
anytime I travelled more than a couple of miles outside them,
I was out-of-service.
Everyone I talked to about it said the same thing: "Only
Verizon works around here".
This raises several questions, first among them being
"Where are the competitors"? The area is growing, and
ISTM that there would be at least one alternative to
such a sole-source situation.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
|
| Date: Sun, 17 May 2015 19:00:29 UTC
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: The Telecom Digest <majordomo@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Are there any #1A ESS offices left?
It just occurred to me, while catching up on emails, that it's been
a while since we had a thread about older types of offices.
Are there any #1A ESS offices still in service? Is there a current
online reference to which offices are being used, and where?
Thanks for any information.
--
E. William Horne
617-803-0992 (Cell)
|
| Date: Sun, 17 May 2015 19:31:19 UTC
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: The Telecom Digest <majordomo@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: What does the news about Stingray really mean?
There was a flurry of news a few weeks ago, about the FBI having
to cut back on use of the "Stingray" cellular monitoring hardware.
My question is "What was the FBI using it for before"? There were
some news stories about the Feds having Stingray-equipped aircraft
flying around to monitor "everything" in the cellular world, and
lurid warnings about how cellphones could/would be used to track
us all from cradle to grave. AFAIK, none of it was ever proven, but
my information may be outdated.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
|
| Date: Sun, 17 May 2015 19:59:20 UTC
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: The Telecom Digest <majordomo@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Have your children stopped checking their voicemail?
While I was on vacation, I tried to keep in touch with my son to ask
about some projects I had asked him to do while I was gone. However,
every time I called his cellphone and it went to voicemail, I got a
"Mailbox is full" message.
He would pay attention to "text" messages, and every now and then I
got to actually speak to him, but it occurs to me that this may
be a trend. Have you been ignoring voicemails too, and is that
common among your circle of callers? In other words,
is "texting" the new standard for messages?
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
|
| From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: The Telecom Digest <majordomo@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Is your cellphone your only connection to the Internet?
It's funny, what you notice when you're far from home.
At least in North Carolina, it seemed to me that there were a lot
of people using cellphones as their only means of Internet access.
This makes sense because DSL and Cable connections are more expensive
there, but I'm curious if there's a widespread change going on.
Please tell me if you are using your cellphone as your only means
of connecting to the Internet. I'll include "tethered" connections
for this question. TIA.
Bill
**********
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
|
| From: Duncan Smith <Duncan@xrtc.net>
To: telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org
Subject: Re: Have your children stopped checking their voicemail?
On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 07:59:20PM +0000, Bill Horne wrote:
> He would pay attention to "text" messages, and every now and then I
> got to actually speak to him, but it occurs to me that this may be a
> trend. Have you been ignoring voicemails too, and is that common
> among your circle of callers? In other words, is "texting" the new
> standard for messages?
I'm in my late 20s, and I don't have a voicemail box. I hate vm.
People always take way too long to get to the point, and usually I
can't even tell what they're saying anyway. They'll quickly mumble a
phone number for me to call, so I have to listen to their three-minute
message multiple times. Listening to voicemail requires sitting on
the phone with a robot for about ten minutes. I can not remember the
keys to operate voicemail systems, with the exception of 7 for delete.
I'm fairly sure that voicemail is a ploy by the telephone companies to
ensure that they can bill for otherwise unanswered calls. It wouldn't
be worth the maintenance cost otherwise. On my T-Mobile line, I can't
turn it off, or even set the forwarding delay to more than 20 seconds.
Instead, I set my voicemail forwarding number to my home phone. That
gets me a few things I like. Incoming calls when I'm home, I can
forward to the landline, which has no compression. So I can actually
understand my friends. And, if someone calls me at night, it's going
to wake me up eventually. This is important to me because when
someone calls rather than texting, it's usually both important and
urgent.
It seems likely to me that your son has intentionally allowed his
voicemail box to fill up, in order to not get irritating "You have a
new voice mail message!" notifications every few days.
Duncan
|
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