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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 229 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Cutting the cord
Re: Cutting the cord
Re: Cutting the cord
Re: Caller pays, was Cutting the cord
Pop song phone number goes up for auction
Re: Pop song phone number goes up for auction
Re: End of a print publication and copyright comment
Re: End of a print publication and copyright comment
Re: Cutting the cord
Re: Cutting the cord
Re: Cutting the cord
Re: End of a print publication and copyright comment
Re: in a Qwest for wireless service...
Re: in a Qwest for wireless service...
500 & 533 Numbers (re: Cutting the Cord)
Re: Cutting the cord
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Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:53:24 -0400
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <MPG.24f54f443a605870989b4c@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <7NOdnRWcAvTD0hbXnZ2dnUVZ_qudnZ2d@speakeasy.net>,
bill@horneQRM.net says...
>
> An article in The Economist says that the Negroponte Switch has hit
> the "knee point" on the curve: from here, it's all downhill for the
> wireline carriers.
>
> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14214847
>
> Bill Horne
You could see this coming years ago. Right around the time of the
Communications Act of 1996 as a matter of fact.
So it begs the question, what happens to the FUSF fee? After all there
is no longer any necessity to build out the network. Just pop a tower
and you're good.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:02:01 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <pan.2009.08.19.05.01.59.817703@myrealbox.com>
On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:07:28 -0400, Bill Horne wrote:
> An article in The Economist says that the Negroponte Switch has hit the
> "knee point" on the curve: from here, it's all downhill for the wireline
> carriers.
>
> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14214847
>
With the US cellphone paradigm where the cellphone owner user pays for the
"airtime" on incoming calls, perhaps there needs to be an additional
option:
Why don't US cellphone providers have a service where you get an
additional incoming number (to the same cellphone) but the caller pays for
the "airtime" (like it is done in many other countries)?
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:55:27 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <h6h79f$1tg7$2@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <pan.2009.08.19.05.01.59.817703@myrealbox.com>,
David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>Why don't US cellphone providers have a service where you get an
>additional incoming number (to the same cellphone) but the caller pays for
>the "airtime" (like it is done in many other countries)?
What makes you think there would be a market for this? I believe one
cellco actually tried this (using 1-500 numbers?) and discontinued it
for lack on interest. Such numbers wouldn't be dialable from many
corporate phone systems anyway. Why shouldn't people pay for their
own mobile devices? It's the owner of the device who benefits from
having it, not innocent callers.
Most cell users don't pay for airtime anyway: they have a package that
includes far more "minutes" than they will ever use in a month.
-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: 19 Aug 2009 17:08:47 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Caller pays, was Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <20090819170847.30854.qmail@simone.iecc.com>
>Why don't US cellphone providers have a service where you get an
>additional incoming number (to the same cellphone) but the caller
>pays for the "airtime" (like it is done in many other countries)?
There have been caller-pays experiments over the years in the US, all
of which were complete failures, because the number of people who
think that they are so important that other people will pay extra to
talk to them vastly exceeds the number who actually are.
The North American numbering plan doesn't have room to add a lot of
special area codes for caller-pays mobile, but we have the 500 and 533
codes assigned to "personal communication services" which are allowed
to charge extra to the caller. Probably not by coincidence, most of
the 500-NXX prefixes are assigned to Verizon, Cingular (AT&T) and
Sprint. Nonetheless, I have never seen a 500 number in use. Has
anyone else?
http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/500_codes.html
By the way, even though the US is mobile pays, most US customers don't
care about the per minute cost because we have bundles that include
more minutes than we ever use. The actual per-minute cost that US
users pay is among the lowest in the world if you add in the real cost
to the callers of "free" incoming calls. (Yes, I know that in some
caller-pays countries there are bundles that include mobile-to-mobile
minutes.) We also have the ability to port numbers between mobile and
landline, which you'll never see outside North America, so we can drop
your landline, keep your number, and your callers don't notice
anything changed.
R's,
John
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:33:14 -0500
From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Pop song phone number goes up for auction
Message-ID: <4A8BC6DA.8050102@annsgarden.com>
Richard wrote:
> Watching a show today on a Las Vegas local TV channel, I
> saw a new ad for a law firm. Its number was 400-0000. I
> didn't think an office code could end in 00.
How is it pronounced? "702 four million"?
"702 ... four-oh-oh ... oh-oh-oh-oh"?
Other examples of N00-0000 numbers:
201-200-0000 New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ (fax).
713-800-0000 Vision Consultants, Katy, TX
Office codes in the form N00 seem to be a blessing and a curse -- a
blessing because they're easy to remember but a curse because nobody is
quite sure how to pronounce them. Nevertheless, there are quite a few
of them around. Here are several that I've encountered; I'm sure there
are many more.
201-200 NJ Jersey City
252-500 NC Scotland Neck
321-600 FL Eau Gallie
443-200 MD Woodlawn
630-300 IL Lisle
630-400 IL St. Charles
702-400 NV Las Vegas
713-200 TX Houston
713-300 TX Houston
713-400 TX Houston
713-500 TX Houston
713-600 TX Houston
713-800 TX Houston
832-400 TX Alvin
903-200 TX Collinsville
919-300 NC Smithfield
979-300 TX Lake Jackson
979-600 TX Eagle Lake
979-800 TX Garwood
Last time we discussed this issue here on T-D, several readers posted
even more examples. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a record of them.
Neal McLain
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:41:05 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Pop song phone number goes up for auction
Message-ID: <h6h2u1$b4h$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <4A8BC6DA.8050102@annsgarden.com> Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> writes:
[snip]
>Office codes in the form N00 seem to be a blessing and a curse -- a
>blessing because they're easy to remember but a curse because nobody is
>quite sure how to pronounce them. Nevertheless, there are quite a few
>of them around. Here are several that I've encountered; I'm sure there
>are many more.
>201-200 NJ Jersey City
...
800-800-LENS (for a contact lens mail/internet/phone order)
--
_____________________________________________________
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, 18 Aug 2009 21:18:32 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: End of a print publication and copyright comment
Message-ID: <4A8B7D18.7020300@thadlabs.com>
On 8/18/2009 8:00 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Mike Wilcox <mjwilcox12@gmail.com> wrote:
>> A look at any P&L sheet will clearly show R&D as an expense by the company
>> and it also feeds the company's intellectual property asset. So the Bell
>> System or other company should just give those assets away for free?
>
> It would be nice if they did.
>
> BUT, even if they didn't, I think I could get my employers to pay, say
> $5k for a complete searchable archive of the BSTJ. We already have it on
> microfilm (for which we paid a lot more than $5k over the years), but I
> think the searchable archive would be a huge advantage.
>
> The thing is.... the BSTJ is not available in searchable digital form
> for any cost, for anyone. This is tragic since a huge amount of fundamental
> acoustic research was done by Bell Labs. I frequently catch people trying
> to replicate research that was published in the BSTJ in the 1930s, because
> they don't know it is in there.
Sic Google on whomever has the rights to and complete copies of the BSTJ.
What I've seen Google do with patents is amazing (since I do a lot of
patent searches), and for something of the importance of the BSTJ Google
might just come through.
It's worth a shot (but I have no idea whom to contact at Google).
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:23:00 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: End of a print publication and copyright comment
Message-ID: <siegman-8D9C44.10230019082009@m001e69f5b7a5.atla.ga.comcast.net>
In article <4A8B7D18.7020300@thadlabs.com>,
Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> wrote:
>
> Sic Google on whomever has the rights to and complete copies of the BSTJ.
>
> What I've seen Google do with patents is amazing (since I do a lot of
> patent searches), and for something of the importance of the BSTJ Google
> might just come through.
>
> It's worth a shot (but I have no idea whom to contact at Google).
I have an EndNote library covering much of the production run of BSTJ
from 1924 to 1975 (about 2500 citations, with abstracts). If someone
would like access to a copy of it, email me and I'll put it on my web
site.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:02:08 -0700
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <ABTim.161164$eS5.58594@newsfe25.iad>
Bill Horne wrote:
> An article in The Economist says that the Negroponte Switch has hit
> the "knee point" on the curve: from here, it's all downhill for the
> wireline carriers.
>
> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14214847
>
> Bill Horne
>
Wireless doesn't work in my concrete and steel condo with a hill between
me and the closest cell site.
Seems like the PUC should regulate and require ubiquitous signal access
if wireless is to become the primary carrier.
More seriously, the masses have no idea how poor the grade of service is
with their little toy radios.
***** Moderator's Note *****
"Little" or "Toy" doesn't matter nearly so much as "radio".
It's just not possible to get the same standard of reliability from a
radio transceiver as from a hard-wired telephone, but the
Tweentysomethings[tm] that grew up with cell phones glued to their
facial ornaments have gotten so used to the poor quality that it seems
normal to them.
In fact, I think we have cell phones to thank for the success of VoIP:
cellular lowered the bar so dramatically that VoIP's latency,
dropouts, and poor voice quality seem like an improvement by
comparison.
Bill Horne
Moderator
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:20:02 -0700
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <S7Zim.171637$vp.56957@newsfe12.iad>
> Bill Horne wrote:
> In fact, I think we have cell phones to thank for the success of VoIP:
> cellular lowered the bar so dramatically that VoIP's latency,
> dropouts, and poor voice quality seem like an improvement by
> comparison.
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
>
We've had Vonage since its inception. No doubt we had those kinds of
problems the first year; perhaps longer.
But, that is long past us.
We also have AT&T wireline service, which is our published number. But,
it is toll restricted so many outgoing calls must be made on our Vonage
service. And, I use the Vonage line for my consulting business.
Neither my wife nor I can tell the difference between the quality on the
Vonage and AT&T lines.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:29:57 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <h6hud5$251m$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <ABTim.161164$eS5.58594@newsfe25.iad>,
Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> wrote:
>In fact, I think we have cell phones to thank for the success of VoIP:
>cellular lowered the bar so dramatically that VoIP's latency,
>dropouts, and poor voice quality seem like an improvement by
>comparison.
Huh?
I've never experienced "latency, dropouts, and poor voice quality" on
any of the VoIP systems I've used (two at work and Comcast's at my
parents' house). Methinks you are confusing the technology with some
particularly poor implementation.
-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, 19 Aug 2009 10:17:02 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: End of a print publication and copyright comment
Message-ID: <siegman-332831.10170219082009@m001e69f5b7a5.atla.ga.comcast.net>
In article <h6f6ib$2kn$1@panix2.panix.com>,
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>
> The thing is.... the BSTJ is not available in searchable digital form
> for any cost, for anyone. This is tragic since a huge amount of fundamental
> acoustic research was done by Bell Labs. I frequently catch people trying
> to replicate research that was published in the BSTJ in the 1930s, because
> they don't know it is in there.
> --scott
>
But my understanding (from informal contact with senior level Bell Labs
retirees and alumni) is that the full prduction run of BSTJ is available
within the Lucent/Alcatel/Bell/Whatever system in scanned and indexed
(though maybe not yet OSCR'ed) form.
Given access to this, conversion to something approaching full text form
would be trivial, either on a full production basis for the whole
archive, or on an individual paper basis for individuals with any modest
OCR software.
Scott, if you have any contact with similar Bell Labs researchers,
whether alumni, retirees, or just old timers, BUG THEM about this.
(And I'd be glad to get copies of any correspondence on this, or any
statements re classic fundamental acoustics papers that are trapped in
BSTJ. I can identify the classic laser papers, the classic e-m theory
and microwave papers, some of the classic noise and quantum theory
papers; but I'm not as well versed in acoustics.)
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:27:13 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: in a Qwest for wireless service...
Message-ID: <siegman-9A4565.10271319082009@m001e69f5b7a5.atla.ga.comcast.net>
In article <Pine.NEB.4.64.0908181725110.29300@panix5.panix.com>,
danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:
>
> Qwest, which is giving its customers 60-day notice of the service
> shut-off, said it would not charge early contract termination fees and
> customers would be able to port their numbers to other providers, such as
> Verizon Wireless.
>
> The company said that in September and October, Qwest customers making
> calls will be routed to Qwest customer service representatives to be
> reminded of the shut-down.
>
Is this a case study for the principle that the more ethical a company
is, and the better the customer service it provides -- the *worse* it
will do in the competitive arena?
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:08:11 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: in a Qwest for wireless service...
Message-ID: <h6hm3b$ct2$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <siegman-9A4565.10271319082009@m001e69f5b7a5.atla.ga.comcast.net> AES <siegman@stanford.edu> writes:
>In article <Pine.NEB.4.64.0908181725110.29300@panix5.panix.com>,
> danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:
>> Qwest, which is giving its customers 60-day notice of the service
>> shut-off, said it would not charge early contract termination fees and
>> customers would be able to port their numbers to other providers, such as
>> Verizon Wireless.
>>
>> The company said that in September and October, Qwest customers making
>> calls will be routed to Qwest customer service representatives to be
>> reminded of the shut-down.
>Is this a case study for the principle that the more ethical a company
>is, and the better the customer service it provides -- the *worse* it
>will do in the competitive arena?
Not to mention sending the CEO off to the Federal Pen, on
charges which, while he was convicted, seem to
be a bit political.
--
_____________________________________________________
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, 19 Aug 2009 14:51:12 -0600
From: "Anthony Bellanga" <anthonybellanga@gonetoearth.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: 500 & 533 Numbers (re: Cutting the Cord)
Message-ID: <WorldClient-F200908191451.AA51120020@gonetoearth.com>
David Clayton wrote:
> With the US cellphone paradigm where the cellphone owner user pays
> for the airtime" on incoming calls, perhaps there needs to be an
> additional option:
>
> Why don't US cellphone providers have a service where you get an
> additional incoming number (to the same cellphone) but the caller
> pays for the "airtime" (like it is done in many other countries)?
This subject, "Calling Party Pays (Airtime)" to call a US or Canada
cellphone, has been discussed numerous times in Telecom Digest over
the years, and the same things result, as Garrett Wollman and John
Levine mention in their replies. Many payphones (for those who still
use them, if you can find ones -- and in working order), business PBX
systems, and even other cellular systems -- would mostly restrict
access to such "caller-pays" "area" codes or office codes. "Caller
Pays" would be thought of very much like pay-per-call 900 and 976. And
since wireless is mostly unregulated (well, the FCC has some oversight
over spectrum, and the government does use the cellcos to collect more
taxes), the abuse with any "caller pays" would be rampant, exactly
like what happened with 900 and 976 and other similar codes.
John Levine replied:
> There have been caller-pays experiments over the years in the US,
> all of which were complete failures, because the number of people
> who think that they are so important that other people will pay
> extra to talk to them vastly exceeds the number who actually are.
>
> The North American numbering plan doesn't have room to add a lot of
> special area codes for caller-pays mobile, but we have the 500 and
> 533 codes assigned to "personal communication services" which are
> allowed to charge extra to the caller. Probably not by coincidence,
> most of the 500-NXX prefixes are assigned to Verizon, Cingular (AT&T)
> and Sprint. Nonetheless, I have never seen a 500 number in use.
> Has anyone else?
When 500 first started in the mid-1990s, there were customers with
their own 500 numbers. The function was rather "loosely defined" by
the North American teleom standards bodies, simply referred to as
"Personal Communications Services". The intent was to allow a customer
to have a "single personal number" which you could forward to your home
phone when you were at home, your wireless phone while in transit, the
landline phone of your friend or family members when visiting them, the
hotel room phone if travelling, your work phone when at work, etc. It
sound "nice" especially in 1960s/70s/80s usage of the phone, when it
was rare to even have a built-in "Mannix" style car-phone (IMTS). But
now people just use their pocket cellphones, and roam all over the US
with their "original" area codes associated with the phone, whether at
home, away at school, away at government (DC, state capitals), on
vacation or permanent move, etc. And since more people are using
cellphones with "unlimited" plans (or huge buckets of minutes with
rollover minutes) on a "nationwide" basis, nobody thinks twice about it!
But during the mid-1990s, AT&T and MCI did offer 500 "personal numbers"
and there was a limited customer base. You can go through the archives
of this Digest (1995, 1996, 1997) and find sig-lines of some regular
participants which include their 500 numbers.
But there was a lot of confusion with 500. Nobody really knew how much
they would be charged. If you couldn't dial it from work or some other
restricted line, or wouldn't dial a 500 number from a phone that wasn't
your own home phone (if the line could dial-out to 500), and wanted to
use your calling card to bill the call, a call to an AT&T 500 number
could be billed to an AT&T calling card, but couldn't be billed to
anyone else's card (the other carriers wouldn't allow calls to an AT&T
500 number to be charged to their cards). And vice-versa regarding MCI
based 500 numbers -- only MCI-issued cards could be used to bill a call
to an MCI 500 number.
Also, charges to 500 numbers, even if to a 500 number of a carrier you
otherwise had an account with, were NOT billed the same as calls to
"POTS" numbers. You did NOT get your discounts that you would on calls
to regular numbers.
AND... there WAS rampant abuse. Since there really wasn't much truly
descriptive and specified in telephone industry standards documentation
and regulatory tariffs regarding 500 numbers, it was fast becoming
another 900 or 976 pay-per-call "scam", with sleazy companies providing
500 numbers as "another 900" with outrageous rates, etc.
By the late 1990s, AT&T and MCI pulled the plug on their 500 servies,
leaving a handful of sleaze companies out there (some of them are still
around with 500).
AT&T and some of the larger companies had also pulled the plug on their
900 services a few years later. AT&T's original 900 service of the
1970s was not a "pay-per-call" service, but at the time was a special
"choke" area code, for "mass calling" situations. Calls would be billed
at normal tariffed rates, NOT expensive pay-per-call charges. A customer
with a 900 number back then could even have their 900 number be reverse
charged back to the 900 number holder, as was done with the very first
(March 1977) radio call-in special with then-president Carter. AT&T,
the White House, and CBS Radio set up the 900-242-1611 number free to
the calling party. I don't know who "ate" the bill on that one, but the
caller did not pay for their calls to that Jimmy Carter March 1977 900
radio call-in number.
Anyway, my understanding is that those huge numbers of 500-NXX codes
assigned to Verizon Wireless and ATat&tT mobility (cingular) is supposed
to be for OnStar services, which must use satellite services of VZ and
ATat&tT.
> http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/500_codes.html
BTW, at this moment, there are still no 533-NXX-xxxx numbers -- only
500-nxx-xxxx numbers. However, NeuStar (NANPA) is about to begin
assigning 533-NXX office codes before the end of this year, 2009, as
500 is close to running out of NXX codes.
> By the way, even though the US is mobile pays, most US customers don't
> care about the per minute cost because we have bundles that include
> more minutes than we ever use. The actual per-minute cost that US
> users pay is among the lowest in the world if you add in the real cost
> to the callers of "free" incoming calls. (Yes, I know that in some
> caller-pays countries there are bundles that include mobile-to-mobile
> minutes.) We also have the ability to port numbers between mobile and
> landline, which you'll never see outside North America, so we can drop
> your landline, keep your number, and your callers don't notice
> anything changed.
One other thing to think of if the US and Canada were to ever radically
push a "caller-pays airtime" special area code (500, 533) for cellphones
is that callers in other parts of the world would see the charges for
calls to those +1-500/533 numbers be triple or even four-times that of
charges for calls to "POTS" numbers in the US and Canada. And these
calls would NOT be included in any international discount plan. I think
that is the case today for overseas-originated calls to existing 500
numbers (or the limited use of 500 numbers in the mid-1990s). It's the
same as if I were to call someone's UK, Australia, etc. cellphone or
"special" or "personal" numbers in other countries (and the UK has quite
a hodge-podge of them, which haunt not only callers from other countries
but also domestic callers who are simply trying to call their own
UK government "health care" 0870-based numbers!). I have international
discount plans with my US-based carriers. However, calls to cellphones
and "special" (personal) numbers in other countries are billed to me
at FULL (and EXPENSIVE) rates, which are even higher than the regular
tariffed charges to "POTS" numbers in those countries! I think that
even Vonage and other VoIP companies also don't give their discounted
rates or packages on calls to cellphone area codes or special/premium/
personal area codes in those other countries!!!
SO, be careful for what you ask for!
-a/b
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:55:54 -0400
From: Ron <ron@see.below>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Cutting the cord
Message-ID: <pk7p85ticepb725v71jrgeslj54nvc956r@4ax.com>
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
>An article in The Economist says that the Negroponte Switch has hit
>the "knee point" on the curve: from here, it's all downhill for the
>wireline carriers.
The article fails to address the counter-trend. Using FIOS to bring
high-speed internet and TV to the home gives landlines a foot in the
door and the ability to set a special price for a triple combo.
--
Ron
***** Moderator's Note *****
I think the article's author is contending that landline service, via
FiOS or any other physical layer, is losing out to cellular. I don't
understand why you feel there is a counter-trend.
Bill Horne
P.S. I saw below, but didn't see your address.
------------------------------
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