Tag: Plain Old Telephone Service

No Bars At Home

AT&T is not alone in causing this kind of angst to a good customer. They have totally removed those who know what’s going on from those asking the questions. In essence, they’ve put their thinking staff behind a firewall. That’s what banks and airlines and all sorts of what were once called ‘service businesses,’ now do.

cell-screen.jpgNot one of my finest photos on the left. Just a little something I took a few minutes ago. It’s my cell phone explaining to me there’s no longer cell service where I live! It says “Emergency Service” because that’s now the only call I can make… if there’s even enough signal for that (It’s not the kind of thing you idly check).

OK – that’s an exaggeration. If you stand in just the right spot, a marginal signal is sometimes available. It’s not a total loss, but pretty close.

Look for yourself. With no strength bars showing, the signal indicator now resembles a screw head – as in… well, draw your own conclusion.

This all began Friday afternoon. My phone rang at work. It was Helaine. She was calling the station’s phone and she was using our POTS&#185. Usually she calls my cell from her cell.

“No cell service,” she said.

It’s electronic. It’s complex. I understand.

When I got home from work, I had no service. Stef was in the same boat.

Friday turned to Saturday, then Saturday to Sunday. Friends came to play poker and those with phones from AT&T found they had no service either.

Today, on my way to work, I called AT&T. Of course their rep saw no reason for my trouble, though the woman on the phone said she’d check for possible ‘service downgrades.’ There are two scary words for someone with the majority of a two year contract in front of him.

Do they honor payment downgrades?

I e-mailed Robert, the guy who sold me my phone, and who seemed pretty technically proficient. He is now asking for assistance on my behalf.

AT&T is not alone in causing this kind of angst to a good customer. They have totally removed those who know what’s going on from those asking the questions. In essence, they’ve put their thinking staff behind a firewall. That’s what banks and airlines and all sorts of what were once called ‘service businesses,’ now do.

So, I’m waiting. I’m sitting on my hands hoping there’s really no need for my cellphone at home. Unfortunately, it has become my number of choice when people ask how they can reach me.

I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.

&#185 – POTS = plain old telephone service.

Of Plugged In Phones And Area Codes

I spent most of last night moving phone numbers between my old Motorola RAZR and the my new Samsung Blackjack and between Helaine’s old phone and her new Motorola RAZR.

You’ve probably heard that your contacts can be electronically moved from phone-to-phone. Sure, but only in theory. In the real world it was pencil and paper and hundreds of characters on tiny keys. I have around 120 entries in my ‘book,’ many with multiple numbers.

About halfway through, all I could think of was, “You’ll never be able to move that thumb again.” I’m assuming emergency rooms are filled with new smartphone owners who get carried away. It’s easy to overdo it.

I learned a few things while entering all those numbers and letters. I have three entries for people named Harold, but only two Johns (plus a Jon). I have more cell numbers entered than home or business numbers. I also have lots of entries where someone’s area code no longer matches their actual physical location.

We’ve reached the end of the line for plugged in phones – what is referred to in the telco biz as POTS, for plain old telephone service. I can’t imagine why Stef, for instance, will ever have one.

The concept of area code is dissolving as well. Why change your number when you move? That meant something back when long distance was costly. Now, in this cellphone world, long distance calling is often included at no additional charge. Even when you’re paying, it’s only pennies.

It also means 212 isn’t necessarily going to New York City.

It used to be, a phone number couldn’t have a 0 or 1 as the second digit. No more. The same goes for 0 or 1 as the middle digit in area codes, which were once required. 561 should not be an area code!

How long has it been? It still looks wrong to me every time. Even my cellphone number, beginning with 710, just looks wrong.

I am lost without the phone book in my cell phone. My mom still has a worn address book she’s used for years. Extra pieces of paper have been shoved in where the allocated space for individual letters has been filled. Mine’s electronic with less finite restrictions!

If you die, you live on forever in my mom’s book. Not so when you’re digital bits being carried in my pocket.

For years, the most powerful and organized people were known by the Rolodex they kept. Past tense on that too.

All of this effort with the new phone was to prepare it for the trip we take early tomorrow morning. It’s ready. I am too.

Our plane leaves at 7:00 AM. Most likely, my next post will be from somewhere in the Desert Southwest. They’d damn well better have cell service!

Watch The Gatekeepers

This might be a choppy entry. I’ve already tried two analogies and failed. How to explain what I want to say?

I’ve just read an article on c|net which points to an upcoming controversy. As video shifts from broadcast to on demand (and make no mistake, that change is happening) will the gatekeepers allow unfettered access if that access diminishes another part of their business?

Is that obtuse? Am I making the point?

Try this. Lets say you own a high speed Internet provider. It could be a cable company or phone company or other business. It doesn’t make much difference because they are all becoming the same business.

Your customers are looking to download video programs over the fat pipe of data you bring into their home. Do you allow them to download programming that you currently sell… or want to sell? Can your customers pull an end around on your pay-per-view offerings, for instance?

If you’re a phone company, can your Internet customers use the Internet to hatchet your POTS (plain old telephone service) package?

An item in the Sunday edition of the industry newsletter Future of TV.net, published by Broadband Reports publisher Dave Burstein, quoted SBC’s chief operating officer, Randall Stephenson, as saying, “We’re going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us.”

The brief item in the newsletter implies that SBC will block all video traffic traveling over its broadband network even if it comes from the public Internet. This means that SBC would essentially block video traffic from any Web sites that distribute video, if the content provider has not struck a deal with SBC.

SBC’s PR people were quick to say it’s not so. Then, the author of the original report actually put a comment on c|net, sticking by his assertions.

SBC’s comments are disingenuous. What I reported was that consumers would not be able to “access content of their choice”, nothing about port blocking. But SBC is limiting bandwidth the user can access to less than the speed of the live video on their coming service, and probably will compromise that bandwidth with excessive QOS, etc.

Whoa!

When an Internet provider in North Carolina limited its customers access to the Vonage VOIP phone service (which would eat into it’s phone business), the FCC quickly stepped in.

However, we’re talking about the big boys now. There’s a lot of money and control at stake. Actually, that sentence works better as: There’s a lot of money at stake with control.

I know this is a complex issue, and I’m not sure I’ve done it justice. Even if I haven’t explained it well enough for you to get every nuance, here’s what you should take home – People are currently fighting over the future of our communications infrastructure. It will affect you at home and at work. It will affect you in the wallet.

Long Distance – My Short Story

Helaine went to place a call to Hartford a few minutes ago. Instead of connecting, she heard a message saying our number had been disconnected. You read right – not the number we were calling – our number had been disconnected!

I tried by placing a call to my cell phone. No problem. Then I called my folks in Florida. Again, without problem. So I called the area code 860 number Helaine had tried and sure enough, there was the announcement.

It didn’t take me long to realize intrastate and interstate long distance are treated differently and maybe there was a screw up with ours. Between cell phones and Steffie’s VOIP&#185 service, and our really large local calling area, we hardly ever call long distance in the state.

Our long distance service has been handled for years by GTC Telecommunications. Who knows who they are? I had never heard of them. But for years we had been getting our long distance for 4.9&#162, painlessly.

Then, one day while looking at their website I noticed they were advertising long distance for 2.9&#162 per minute. I called, asked to be switched, and I assume the problem started then.

After waiting on hold for about 5-10 minutes Keith answered. I asked at the end of the call, but guessed from his first words, that Keith was in India. Though he was able to take care of the problem, and he did speak English perfectly, there were communications problems because he doesn’t speak American English.

There are phrases and ironic statements that we all use all the time which were… well, they were foreign to Keith.

At the end of the conversation he told me I’d have to call my local phone company and tell them I needed my intrastate carrier changed to ‘pic code 0333.’

No sweat.

I picked up the phone and called SBC, my ‘local’ phone company. I have accented ‘local’ because, until recently, we had our own lovely, local, responsive phone company – SNET.

SNET was the classic non-Bell local phone company, covering the vast majority of Connecticut. A few years ago, in a deal that richly rewarded their top management, SNET was sold to SBC. My phone still works, but now I’m a little jerkwater customer far away from SBC’s Texas home office. Before Connecticut was SNET’s only business.

SNET was sold, we were told, because they couldn’t compete in this increasingly complex world of telecommunications. Now, if business is bad somewhere else in SBC’s system, our bill goes up here.

After working through the voice mail tree (some options have recently changed – right) a pleasant woman with a Texas accent picked up the phone. I assume that used to be a Connecticut job. I explained my problem and read her the pic code – 0333.

“We use codes with letters” she responded.

Luckily, the carrier for my intrastate service was the same as the working carrier for my interstate service. She says it will be fixed before the close of business today. There was a $2.60 charge for switching, but considering someone dropped the ball in this mess, she waived the fee.

She couldn’t have been nicer… even though she tried to upsell me some services before I could hang up.

The sad part is, years ago this was a big deal. Long distance was a much larger line item. Now, with cell phones and Steffie’s VOIP service, we make many fewer long distance calls with our wired phones. Most months we’re under $20 – closer to $10, for long distance.

There are people at work who don’t have wired phones at all. Maybe someday soon, we’ll join them.

&#185 – VOIP is Voice Over Internet Protocol. Instead of having a real connection between two phones having a conversation, the phone call is digitized and sent as packets through the Internet or other data network. It is much cheaper to provide that standard phone circuits (called POTS for Plain Old Telephone Service). Steffie’s phone has unlimited calling in Connecticut for $10 a month – with voice mail, caller ID and anything else you could imagine in a phone. It is why GTC can afford to route customer service calls to India and what SBC’s executives have nightmares about every night.