Message-ID: <536aa190-8fed-0074-9d6d-d4da3a5bffd2@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2021 19:23:17 -0500
From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>
Subject: Please consider volunteering to be a Guest Moderator
To the readers,
Since Dave will be going on vacation soon, The Telecom Digest needs more
volunteers to serve as Guest Moderators. I hope that many of my readers
are eager to contribute, and I'll cite the advantages of being a Guest
Moderator, such as ...
* Experience managing a distributed team and motivating team members.
* Real-world responsibilities for creating content in the oldest
continuously-published electronic magazine on the Internet.
* An opportunity to learn about HTML markup, Cascading Style Sheets,
and the BASH scripting language, to any level of expertise you want
to aim for.
* Experience delivering well-written online content on a schedule.
* The chance to leverage your Telecom Digest Moderator time to move up
to new responsibilities in your employer's graphics department or as
an IT Management professional.
Bill, who is getting better at typing one-handed but is still trying to
train the speech-recognition software
--
I don't want to say that I'm old and worn out, but I'm never anywhere
near the curb on trash day
(Please removr "QRM" from my email address in order to write to me directly)
Message-ID: <sp9d2h$7s6$1@dont-email.me>
Date: 14 Dec 2021 01:20:03 -0500
From: "Michael Trew" <michael.trew@att.net>
Subject: Report Highlights States Using ARPA Funding for Broadband
"The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) makes funding available to
individual states that can be used for a variety of purposes, including
broadband, at each state's discretion. A new report from the Pew
Charitable Trust highlights several states that are using ARPA funding
for broadband.
Some programs target broadband deployment, some target low-income
households and some - known as line extension programs - involve both
broadband deployment and affordability."
https://www.telecompetitor.com/report-highlights-states-using-arpa-funding-for-broadband-including-line-extensions/
Message-ID: <sp6f4b$5ed$1@dont-email.me>
Date: 13 Dec 2021 03:36:43 -0000
From: "C Mercadal" <mercadal@diablonet.net>
Subject: Ten-digit dialing diatribe
Hi folks,
I was recently recommended your newsgroup, and I see that I missed
some discussion a couple months back on ten-digit dialing becoming
mandatory in rather a large number of area codes. Here's a brief
story of how poorly the changeover went for my aging, technology-phobic
father.
About three weeks ago I got a call from my aunt, frantic, that my
dad's phone had been disconnected. She called the phone company
to help him get his landline turned back on, but after many hours
on the phone with AT&T customer service, and even after eventually
findng a sypmethetic employee who said the service could be restored,
the promised restoration of his landline never happened as she was
told it would in the week thereafter.
Rewind a couple more weeks, and my dad, as he later explained to
me, was having difficulty dialing out on his home phone, and he
thought his cordless phone was the culprit. (He kept telling me he
thought the '6' button on the keypad was not dialing right, so his
calls wouldn't complete – which might be a touch of senility.) In
hopes of fixing it, he went to a local AT&T store.
>From what he told me, he told his problem to the technicians there,
who set him up with a cell phone ... and, as he could not explain
to me, but later became apparent, the store also ported his landline
number to the cell phone. Now my dad is much more easily confused
by technology than the average person, and resultigly he had a
non-operable landline at this point, and a cell phone he couldn't
figure out how to operate or activate.
To make things simple, once it was clear his old landline number
wasn't coming back, I called AT&T and ordered him a new landline.
(I figured maybe I can port away his old landline number to a SIP
provider and call foward it to him eventually.) It was set up in
just the span of a couple hours. I called him on it after it was
provisioned and he complained about getting the "you must also
include an area code" intercept message when making outbound local
calls.
Now wondering if my dad had totally lost his marbles, it was only
this evening, as I was catching up in my newsreader and saw the
ten-digit dialing articles here that it clicked: I think the ten-digit
dialing switchover in October confused him, and he thought his
phone's buttons were not functioning right, which set off all the
other troubles mentioned above.
I'm hopeful I can call him tomorrow and explain to him this is just
the way it is now, and that he'll remember it the next time he goes
to dial. What a mess to have to sort out, though, and I just keep
ruminating on the number of ways this could have gone otherwise to
have this not have gone all wrong.
Message-ID: <69710141-73ce-450b-d4d1-2add5ca0a0ba@verizon.net>
Date: 10 Dec 2021 18:09:53 -0500
From: "David Perrussel" <dmine4545@remove-this.verizon.net>
Subject: T-Mobile customer service is getting as bad as the rest
T-Mobile's merger with Sprint was supposed to create a supercharged
wireless competitor pushing innovations, lowering prices and staying
true to its core principle - standing up for customers.
Lately it's been falling down.
Mergers are rarely easy and complications from the pandemic have
compounded the situation. But beyond those challenges, something very
offbrand is happening at Bellevue-based T-Mobile. At a time when industry
growth is slowing and price wars are starting to break out, T-Mobile
appears to be losing one of its competitive edges: customer service. Its
positioning under former CEO John Legere as the little carrier that
cares helped fuel market share gains over the past six years. Now, those
gains are slowing.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/t-mobile-customer-service-is-getting-as-bad-as-the-rest/
