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Message Digest
Volume 29 : Issue 35 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
Re: OT: NASA, Bell Labs, NSA, and the Voynich Manuscript
Some more sites for telephone historians
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Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:27:55 -0800
From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
Message-ID: <vkban.38028$RS6.22699@newsfe15.iad>
Sam Spade wrote:
>
> I don't think Tilly will go cellular: she's going to be pinching
> pennies in her senior years, and she'll be uncomfortable with the
> variable monthly costs of a cell phone compared to the fixed cost of a
> POTS line.
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
>
I took your (or whomever's ;-) Aunt Tilly and had placed her in
California where all service is now totally deregulated. Auntie is
distressed at at$t line charges going up by $2.95 each year, and Caller
ID (which she loves) now costing $9.99 a month.
Although her wireless service is also deregulated, unlike wireline, it
is sold on a national basis, thus she is "protected" by the wireless
carriers' rather robust national competition, unlike the state-wide
wireline carriers, for which the California special-interest politicians
have thrown her to the wolves.
Tilly does fine with her AT&T rollover minutes. As a practical matter
those keep her monthly costs fixed.
Then, there are the poor, penny pinching seniors to which you refer, who
are protected in California by certification of low-income level, thus
eligible for the highly subsidized life-line wireline service (just hope
the improverished senior's inside wiring doesn't go bad, though).
**** Moderator's Note *****
It may be that Great Aunt Tilly has low-cost cellular _available_, but
I doubt she'll use it. I've only my own mother to compare to, and my
mom avoided cell phones and CLASS features like the plague: she had to
get me to record the announcement on her - believe it or not - AT&T
cordless phone/TAS combination set.
Great Aunt Tilly may like Caller ID, but my mother disdained it as
"silly", and said that if she wanted to know who was calling, she'd
just answer the phone. If I said "It's just Nine dollars a month",
she'd always look agast and reply "That's over a Hundred dollars a
year with nothing to show for it!"
I don't think Tilly, or the other "snowbirds" of her generation, are
going to embrace cellular. Tilly has a different perspective on the
value of "convenience" than we do. YMMV.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 19:07:59 -0800 (PST)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
Message-ID: <803118f5-357e-40cd-91c8-847578846a1d@d27g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
> **** Moderator's Note *****
>
> It may be that Great Aunt Tilly has low-cost cellular _available_, but
> I doubt she'll use it. I've only my own mother to compare to, and my
> mom avoided cell phones and CLASS features like the plague: she had to
> get me to record the announcement on her - believe it or not - AT&T
> cordless phone/TAS combination set.
We have to be careful when generalizing about seniors and telephone
service. While some want POTS only, others have embraced technology
and have the whole works--cell phone, computer, Internet, etc.
My own mother had no interest in a cell phone but insisted many years
ago I get one for safety purposes if I have an emergency while
driving.
She tried Call Waiting--many of her friends had it--but she did not
care for it. She had a simple answering machine.
A word about seniors with dementia and using the telephone:
Most seniors today have been exposed to telephones virtually their
entire lives, so using them is a long ingrained habit. Seniors with
early-to-middle dementia continue to use the phone reasonably well,
even remembering the new mandatory 10 digit dialing. As the dementia
advanced they would have trouble making or even receiving calls (not
understanding what the ringing of phone meant), however, when given
the handset they knew what it was for and how to talk on it.
> I don't think Tilly, or the other "snowbirds" of her generation, are
> going to embrace cellular. Tilly has a different perspective on the
> value of "convenience" than we do. YMMV.
It really depends on the senior's lifestyle. Regardless of age, a
senior still mentally sharp and living on his/her own probably would
have a cellphone. A senior not doing as well living in a senior
center probably would not as they wouldn't need it.
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 22:44:04 -0500
From: "Bob Goudreau" <BobGoudreau@nc.rr.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: at&t vs. Verizon TV ad campaign?
Message-ID: <FA71252A546D4720A4626951C7AFAF1A@estore.us.dg.com>
Moderator Bill wrote:
> I did, however, speculate that Great Aunt Tilly would migrate to the
> Sun Belt and choose a new ILEC someday, and I think that's why SBC
> bought the AT&T brand name, since Tilly is likely to choose it in her
> new home.
Umm, how would she get to choose her ILEC? Each area has just one ILEC, by
definition. Yes, she could choose a CLEC instead, but my point was precisely
that this is the class of consumer who will just order POTS from "the" local
phone company, even if it's not AT&T.
Bob Goudreau
Cary, NC
***** Moderator's Note *****
Well, Tilly may not know that "SBC" is the ILEC, but she's more
likely to choose "AT&T" than she is to choose "Vonage", or some other
familiar name.
And I didn't mean "ILEC", I meant "phone company other than what she
was used to", but I wrote "ILEC". My bad.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 23:44:30 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: OT: NASA, Bell Labs, NSA, and the Voynich Manuscript
Message-ID: <MPG.25d41abc18a0a0a3989c5c@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <3HY9n.4878$4N4.1503@newsfe24.iad>, sam@coldmail.com says...
>
> Steven wrote:
> > David Clayton wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:07:02 -0600, Telecom Digest Moderator wrote:
> >> .......
> >>
> >>> Help! I'm drowning in te....
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> @@@Carrier Lost
> >>
> >>
> >> And how many Internet kiddies today have no idea what used to pump out of
> >> old voice band modems or what the Hayes "AT" control set is (was?).......
> >>
> > I have a friend that still used dial-up, she is in a digital black hole.
> >
>
> Some of us also travel to those digital holes. That's why a maintain a
> Juno dial-up account.
>
> Having said that, between the embedded software modems in most laptops
> these days, and the good software of Juno or Earthlink, the AT command
> set is unseen and unknown by today's dial-up subscriber.
I have NEVER used the modem port on my laptop. Nor have I used the wired
ethernet connector when on the road. Everyplace I've gone has had WiFi
available so I just use that.
Even when I was in Elizabeth City, NC there's a cafe there called Muddy
Waters - they had WiFi available.
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:32:57 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject:Some more sites for telephone historians
Message-ID: <4B6A4DF9.80602@speakeasy.net>
Here are a couple of sites that have some good information for historians:
The Bruce Crawford Memorial Switching Documentation Library -
http://www.switchersquarterly.org/library.htm
The TCI Library, which has a lot of BSPs -
http://www.telephonecollectors.org/DocumentLibrary/index.htm
Bill Horne
(Filter QRM for direct replies)
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End of The Telecom digest (5 messages)
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