Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog

Like many corporations, Verizon occasionally gives away some money, possibly in the hope that we will see them as civic-minded and therefore overlook some of their other transgressions.  I’ll pass this little bit of PR along because it may mean that some Michigan organizations will get some funding, but at the same time I will note (as a male of the species) that the types of organizations that will benefit for Verizon’s contributions sometimes have a rather dismal record in protecting battered and/or physically/emotionally abused men - and yes, such creatures do exist. I could make some snarky comments about Verizon perhaps having a feminist agenda, but on the other hand this might really be an act of corporate goodwill, and there is no denying that such organizations as these sometimes save the lives of women and children.  I just wish that the organizations that are “guilty as charged” would get rid of their huge blind spot insofar as the battered or abused male is concerned - men aren’t always the abusers in a relationship.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich., May 5 /PRNewswire/ — Applications for Verizon Wireless’ HopeLine grants are due from community groups by June 30. Michigan non-profit groups are eligible to apply if they directly benefit domestic violence survivors and their families or offer programs that raise awareness of and prevent domestic violence, teen dating violence, partner violence or elder abuse.

Grant applicants must have a 501(c) 3 tax status, and funding requests should not exceed $10,000. Proposals may be submitted in writing to Michelle Gilbert at michelle.gilbert@verizonwireless.com. The deadline for submitting proposals is June 30, 2008. All applicants will be notified between July 1 and Sept. 30. …..

Read the rest of the Verizon press release.

You have probably seen, or will shortly see, the news about how a Canadian toddler died because the family’s 911 call, placed via a VoIP service, never reached the local 911 dispatch center. As sure as I am that I breathe air, I’m just about as sure that some some phone company PR bastard will try to spin this as though it was an inherent fault of VoIP that caused the child’s death (and will maker sure that news media around North America gets that version of the story).

The facts, however, shed a bit more light on the subject. As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports:

Comwave is still trying to sort out that night’s events. The Luck family’s call was routed to a third-party call centre in Concord, Ont. Comwave had 10 staff members handling 911 calls across Canada.

According to Mr. Barzakay, the network automatically reconnected the call after the initial failed attempt to contact 911. He couldn’t yet say how many rings went unanswered.

The worker at the call centre had a hard time understanding the caller because of a language barrier, Mr. Barzakay said, and relied on the Mississauga address on file and dispatched an ambulance there. He added that customers are encouraged to stay on the phone, but in this case, the caller hung up.

“There was indeed difficulty,” Mr. Barzakay said. “Whether it was from hysterics on the call, I’m not sure.”

But he acknowledged that the family wasn’t to blame. “Clearly, the customer is entitled to receive 911 the moment they press 911.”

The above paragraphs are buried way down in the article, and I just wanted to call your attention to them.  Comwave, the VoIP company involved, is clearly not trying to shirk any responsibility they may have had, but as any 911 operator can tell you, in a panic situation callers sometimes do dumb things, like hanging up in the middle of the call.  And no 911 operator can be expected to understand every caller with a thick accent, or who is speaking in another language. After all, people who are fluent in many languages generally command a much higher salary than what we pay 911 operators.

There have been cases where traditional telephone companies have routed 911 calls to the wrong call center.  We reported a few years ago (on the old MI-Telecom mailing list) of a case where a Wisconsin man died of a heart attack when his 911 call was misrouted - and that call went entirely over the PSTN.  Two years ago, the mother of a 5-year-old boy died when a Detroit 911 operator thought the child was playing with the phone, and wouldn’t take the call seriously, and that was a PSTN call also.

Much of the problem that VoIP companies have had with VoIP calls is that the phone companies aren’t exactly trying to make it easy for VoIP companies to make the connections.  I know someone that works at a company that does VoIP, and he has told me that if they pass a VoIP call onto their upsteam carrier and it’s from a number that’s not in some database, they have to pay some astronomical sum ($20 or $25, if I recall correctly) for that one single call, even if it was just a misdialed call.  I don’t really understand why this is the case, but it apparently is.

Many years ago, the various regulatory agencies decided that it was important for telephone companies to pass the Caller ID number to each other as part of the call setup, without charging the company that receives the data (alas, such was not the case for Caller ID name information, which is why you often get calls showing something generic like “cell phone”, or a city and state, instead of the caller’s name). If they have the power to say that certain information must be passed without regard for compensation, shouldn’t that also be true of emergency calls?

The death of a child is always tragic.  But if there is any good to come from it, it might be that the CRTC and the FCC will order phone companies to pass 911 calls through to the correct 911 center expeditiously, and without charge.  We would think that in an emergency, concerns over who pays for a call should be a secondary consideration, yet no small VoIP company can afford to pay ridiculously high charges to pass 911 calls through to a company that can handle them (usually the incumbent local telephone company).

The thing you have to keep in mind is that 911 center operators - usually municipalities or counties - buy their 911 service (and often their equipment) from the telephone company, for the same reason that 20 years ago most businesses bought computers from IBM - it’s a “safe” purchase decision.  If the equipment doesn’t work, if the service has problems, you can blame the telephone company, but not the employee that made the decision to use the phone company’s services. The problem is that the phone companies can then control how calls access the 911 center, and they are not above making it difficult or expensive for VoIP companies to provide high quality 911 service.  That needs to change - 911 access must be “carrier agnostic” and even, insofar as is possible, “technology agnostic.”  The phone companies must not be allowed to set up barriers to the completion of 911 calls from alternative technology services, just because they can, and because it might put more money in their accounts.

I’m aware that part of the problem is number and device portability.  Nowadays you cannot look at the area code and first three digits of a phone number and determine the location of a caller - they might be using a cell phone, or a VoIP adapter plugged in somewhere other than the usual location.  It’s pretty certain that devices are only going to get more portable as time progresses, and we need a way to pass real-time location information along with 911 calls. The idea of associating a particular number with a fixed location is just plain nonsense that is costing lives.  I don’t have any “quick fix” for this, but acting as though we are still living in the 1950’s, when every phone number terminated at a fixed and specific location, is surely not the answer!

But there is one final point to keep in mind. Sometimes, bad things just happen. Children are killed because something goes wrong every year. Children choke on defective toys, but we don’t blame all toys.  Children drown, but we don’t try to ban swimming pools or say that children are not allowed to swim in a lake. Some children are even tragically killed by parents or caretakers in fits of anger, but we certainly don’t blame all parents or make it illegal to hire babysitters. Likewise, it would be totally irresponsible and repugnant for a telephone company to use this child’s death for some anti-VoIP propaganda.  This was one incident, which we surely wish would not have happened, but which also does not give the incumbent phone companies any reason to tar all VoIP service with the same brush - in fact, until the investigation is complete and all the facts are known, it doesn’t even give them the right to say anything bad about that particular VoIP company.

Once in a while you run into a situation where someone wants to put a whole bunch of phones on one physical phone pair. This can often happen in a home with many rooms, where every room has been prewired with a phone jack. You start out with a phone in the kitchen or living room, then you want one in the master bedroom, then each of the kids wants one, then you want one in the workshop down in the basement, and so on. Okay, so granted that the above example would probably have been more appropriate 20 years ago (before all the family members started wanting their own cell phones) but you can still run into such situations, both in homes and in small businesses that only have one or two phone lines and a bunch of phones hanging off each line.

In the old days the phone company let you have enough current to ring five standard telephone ringers - 5 REN in telco-speak - and that was five of the old mechanical style ringers with real bells. But nowadays people have started replacing their old wireline lines with newer stuff, like VoIP, and VoIP adapters can be notoriously stingy with ring current. Sometimes when people convert to VoIP, they find that they either have to disconnect some phones (or at least, shut off or disconnect the ringers in those phones) or figure out a way to boost the ring current.

Yet another problem with both certain makes of VoIP adapters, and even with some low-cost telephone switches sold to businesses, is that they don’t produce enough ringing voltage or current to begin with. That might be particularly true if the adapter or switch was designed to standards other than those typically used in the U.S.A. and Canada. In those two countries, phones and phone equipment have always been designed to expect ringing current at approximately 90 volts AC at 20 Hertz (cycles per second), but in some other countries both the ringing voltage and frequency can be quite different, causing equipment designed for the North American standard to not ring properly. Even with a VoIP adapter set to the correct voltage and frequency (not all are; it’s left to the provider to set those parameters on some devices), most VoIP adapters are only rated at 3 REN or less.

Recently I discovered that Mike Sandman Enterprises has started offering their Ring Voltage Booster II™ - this is the successor to the original Ring Voltage Booster™ that Mike has been selling for several years now, and it looked to me as though it would be just the thing to cure those ringing problems. The Ring Voltage Booster II is used in series with a telephone wire pair entering the premises (or coming out of a VoiP adapter or similar device), and it senses ringing voltage on the line and increases it (actually regenerates it) to the North American standard 90VAC RMS at 20 cycles, and increases ringing current to 7.5 REN.

I wanted to obtain a unit and try it out. I did just that and I thought I’d share the results of my test with you folks, because I was very favorably impressed with the unit. If all you want to know is whether it works as advertised, I would say that based on my experience the answer is an unqualified yes (with one very minor caveat, which I will mention in a moment).

The way I tested it was this. I had a Sipura SPA-2000 VoIP adapter which was connected to the existing phone wiring in a home where the wireline service has recently been disconnected. There was already quite a collection of phone equipment on the line, and I hung a couple of extra items on to load it down. When we got through adding phones we had the following on the line: two modern phones with warble-type ringers, three old 2500-series touch-tone wall phones with real mechanical ringers, one old 2500-series desk set with a real mechanical ringer, and just for fun, one old Western Electric 302 desk set with original ringer and ringing capacitor.

I want everyone reading to pause for a moment and consider that, apart from the fact that this 1940’s-era phone has a rotary dial rather than a touch tone pad, it works great today with the original ringer and capacitor. I’ve had several computer power supplies fail on me in recent years, usually within a year or two of purchase, due to bad capacitors (in a couple cases, exploding capacitors!). For all the bad things about the old Bell System, they sure knew how to build a telephone that would survive just about anything, except the elimination of switching equipment that accepts rotary dial pulses.

Anyway, I had the aforementioned relatively huge load (well above 3 REN, no matter how you count it) hooked up to the Sipura SPA-2000, and I placed a call to it.

And darned if the phones didn’t ring!

I stood there open-mouthed for a moment. Granted the ringing was a bit weak, but all the phones were ringing. I really hadn’t expected that. I could tell I was putting a significant load on the SPA-2000, but not enough to make a very noticeable difference in the quality of ringing. Then it dawned on me - I remember reading somewhere that early Sipura adapters were conservatively rated, but such was not necessarily the case with their successor, the PAP-2 from Linksys. Well, I have one of those, too.

So I disconnected the SPA-2000 and hooked up the newer PAP-2, and placed a call to the PAP-2, and did that make a difference! With the same load as described above, the phones were still ringing, but they were really struggling. The W.E. 302 and one of the new warblers were having the most trouble, both giving only partial rings. The others were ringing very anemically.

I then inserted the Ring Voltage Booster II™ and placed several test calls. The ringing was clear and strong, in fact, each phone rang as if it were the only phone on the line, and the ringing seemed loud and crisp on all phones. Granted this is a bit of a subjective observation since I was, after all, listening to mechanical telephone bells ring, but I grew up with those and I know what they sound like when they are ringing as they should, and these were.

There were two other things I wanted to observe. One was whether the unit interfered in any way with Caller ID. Only one of the phones in this test had a Caller ID display, but it got the correct Caller ID information every time. The other thing was whether it would have any problem with a distinctive ringing signal, and again, I can report that it did not. I happen to have that adapter programmed so that when a particular friend calls it rings with a distinctive ring, since this particular friend seems to have a peculiar form of psychic ability - he always seems to call when I am indisposed (usually in the bathroom or some such thing). So if it rings with his ring, I know I can wait until I’m through with whatever I’m doing, then call him back and share a laugh over yet another occurrence of his weird form of E.S.P. So, in order to test distinctive ringing, I called him and asked him to call me back and let it ring, and once the ringing commenced I checked several phones and all were ringing with the correct distinctive ring cadence (two approximately one-half second rings followed by a one second ring, or at least that’s what it sounds like). Also, I could hear a relay inside the Ring Voltage Booster II™ clicking on and off in time with the distinctive ring patterns.

In fact, the unit worked perfectly, save for one very minor nit: Sometimes, if I picked up a phone during a ring, it would continue to apply ringing voltage for the duration of that ring - in other words, it didn’t seem to always sense that the phone had been picked up and stop the ringing until that ring had ended. In all fairness, I’ve seen this happen before with other types of equipment, including real phone switches (particularly on long loops in rural areas, etc.). What this means is that if you pick up the phone at the very start of a ring and press it to your ear immediately, you could get a pretty loud buzz in the ear for a second or so. I don’t think this will be a major issue for most users, particularly since the unit solves a much greater problem (phones not ringing at all, or ringing very weakly). But for a few people, it might be an annoyance (Edit: One way to reduce this would be to always use a ring pattern that has rings that are one second long or less.  Some VoIP providers will let you set a “distinctive ringing” pattern for each line or each incoming number - if you pick one that has a two or more short rings instead of a single long one, you greatly reduce your chance of hearing the loud buzz when you pick up the phone.  Now that I think of that, I’ll bet that explains why many independent telephone companies used one-second long rings, instead of the two-second rings common in the Bell System).  I don’t know if this was an issue with just the unit I was using, or with all of the units of this model, but it was the only thing I noticed about the unit that wasn’t “perfect” - in every other way, it delivered all you’d expect from such a device.

There are a couple of other pleasant surprises about this unit. Neither the unit itself nor its power supply seem to generate excessive heat in normal standby mode (I did not test an extended ringing cycle lasting several minutes or more, because that would have required shutting off voicemail) - in fact the small “wall wart” was very cool to the touch a couple hours after being plugged in. That’s more than I can say about many of the “wall wart” power supplies i normally use, and as you know, heat is wasted energy, so I’m very happy that Mike is including what appears to be a quality power supply. But what really shocked me was the small size of the unit. Perhaps it’s because I’m an “olde pharte” that equates a ringing generator with, at the very least, a large steel box hanging on the wall in a basement or phone closet, but this thing blew me away because it’s even smaller than any of my VoIP adapters! The longest dimension on it is only about three and a half inches. You’re almost certainly not going to have any problem finding a place to put it.

Hookup couldn’t be simpler, but you must observe that you get the connections right to avoid damaging the unit - in other words, don’t connect the side that’s supposed to be connected to the phones to the incoming phone line, or you will damage the unit. There are only three connections, one for power, one for the incoming line (labeled “line in” - this is the side you’d connect to a VoIP adapter), and one to go to the phones. If you are connecting it to a VoIP adapter you can probably do it in under a minute, once you have it out of the packaging.

In summary, if for any reason you don’t have enough ringing voltage or current on your phone line (or coming out of a VoIP adapter) and you need to boost it, this is the unit that will do it, at least up to 7.5 REN. And if you have a ridiculous number of phones on one line, remember that you can connect some of them before the Ring Voltage Booster II™ (using the original ringing voltage and current from the line or adapter) and the rest after (using the regenerated ringing current from the Ring Voltage Booster II™).

One caveat, this unit does not increase the gain (circuit loss), talk battery, or loop current of a line - if you need to boost loop current then Mike sells a separate Loop Current Booster™ that will do that. But the Ring Voltage Booster II™ basically gets out of the way when the phone isn’t ringing, and should not have any effect whatsoever on transmit or receive volume levels.

Mike Sandman has been selling quality phone equipment for many years now, so I expected this to be a quality unit. Even so, I was very favorably impressed with it. If you have problems related to low ringing voltage or current, get this device. If you have problems related to wrong-frequency ringing current (something that’s putting out ringing current at a frequency other than 20 Hertz), I’m pretty sure this will solve that problem as well, though I did not test that personally. Here is one more link to the page that describes this unit (and some others) and please note this is a plain-vanilla link - I’m not making any commission or anything if you buy one. I hope this review helps someone that’s having a problem getting their phones to ring!

photo credit: libraryman

Two items today that show that phone companies still think they can treat customers like crap and that you folks will just take it. The first is this item from The Consumerist:

Here’s an odd little letter. For once a customer was actually pleased with the salesperson that came to their door and convinced them to try FiOS. Yay! The trouble came when the nice salesperson called in and Verizon refused to activate the account unless the customer canceled their phone lines with Vonage and Cablevision and switched all three to Verizon.

Full article: Verizon: Cancel Vonage And Cablevision Phone Lines Or You Can’t Have FiOS

Of course, this is more than likely the actions of a couple of poorly-trained employees (including a supervisor who allegedly couldn’t care less whether Verizon acquired a new customer or not) but this sort of thing happens FAR too often.  Big phone companies need to train their employees that customers matter, that without customers there is no reason for the company to exist - and that sort of service-oriented training simply doesn’t seem to be happening.

Now, I learned a long time ago that if you don’t like what a phone company rep is telling you, all you have to do is hang up and play “customer service roulette” - in other words, keep calling back until you find a rep who is willing to see things your way (preferably BEFORE you give them your account information, so they can’t make a note on your account if they deny your request - and it helps if you’re not calling from the phone number that your inquiring about, in case they are capturing Caller ID or ANI). But most customers are either not willing to jump through such hoops, or don’t know that they can.

Yes, the salesperson probably should have never mentioned the Vonage and Cablevision VoIP lines (and I’ll bet that he knows better now!), but the real fault seems to be that Verizon’s poorly trained employees apparently have a “don’t give a damn” attitude toward customers.  Of course, my guess is that they get it from their management, which seems to have a “don’t give a damn” attitude toward entire states (we are still waiting to see FiOS deployed anywhere in Michigan). It turns out that Verizon management is now doing some backpedalling but I’d bet that this attempt to make amends would never have happened if the affected prospective customer had not reached out to The Consumerist.  So here’s a thought:  If you think we’re being discriminated against by Verizon here in Michigan, maybe you should try sending your gripe to The Consumerist - they seem to be about the only ones the phone companies pay attention to these days.

But, let us not give grief only to Verizon.  AT&T has their own brand of craziness.  Quoting from a news item in BroadbandReports.com:

From the “we’re terrified of becoming a dumb pipe” and “that ad revenue sure looks tasty” departments comes news that AT&T is developing their own web browser, dubbed Pogo. The new browser is Mozilla based and includes 3D visual technology developed by Vizible, which AT&T has a stake in. The private beta just launched last week and a video demo is available here.

The browser’s “3D” GUI is a bit of a system pig (for a browser), requiring a 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. ….. Of course if you give users a piece of bloated crap painted blue and tied to the AT&T brand, that idea may backfire. Early impressions aren’t exactly stellar. While it’s only in early beta, major complaints include the high system specs, slow performance, bookmark import issues and a generally unintuitive interface.

Full article: AT&T Developing New Web Browser

So here is my question:  Did some dim bulb at AT&T actually think that if they installed a slow, bloated, AT&T branded browser on their customers’ computers, this would actually make people want to stay with AT&T?  You can pretty much be assured that if the release version of this browser causes major problems on people’s computers, cable company advertising will be amended to note that fact.

Now this is another case where if a customer has sufficient knowledge, they will not allow an ISP (any ISP) to install software on their computer.  Unless you are so technologically behind the curve that you need help finding the power switch on your computer, AND you don’t have a technically knowledgeable person in your immediate or extended family, then you shouldn’t even have your computer turned on during a broadband installation, unless YOU are sitting at the keyboard doing the navigation.  And you never, ever, ever under ANY circumstance let a phone company or cable company installer stick a CD or other media into your computer (unless perhaps it’s an older “sacrificial” computer that you keep around just for testing purposes, where you don’t mind reformatting the hard drive and/or reinstalling the operating system afterwards.  If the “sacrificial” computer has some version of Linux installed, so much the better - most installers won’t touch a Linux box with the proverbial ten foot pole!).  If the installer says he needs to test the setup, tell him he’s welcome to use his laptop computer, but he’s not touching yours.

Unfortunately, far too many customers are way too trusting when the installer arrives, and the problem is that if their only previous experience was with dial-up, even a slow browser will seem faster than what they are used to, so they may not realize it immediately if a browser that gives less than optimal performance has been installed. What they may notice is that their friends who get their broadband from the cable company seem to be able to load web pages much faster. That’s why providing any browser that slows down the customer’s computer, even by just a little, is a really crazy thing to do - it gives customers another reason to go to the competition.

At any given time, I may have as many as four or five different browsers installed on my computer, none of which are from Microsoft or any phone or cable company.  The only one I use for day to day web surfing is Firefox, and when the release version of Firefox 3 comes out I would recommend that everyone try it - it fixes many of the memory leak problems of previous versions. I also have Opera (which will actually render an occasional site that Firefox won’t), Safari (came with my Mac), and Camino, just to mention the ones I can think of offhand - so I’m not exactly adverse to trying new browsers.  But a branded one from a phone or cable company?  Ain’t gonna happen!

Image from Wikipedia

I came across an article from Fortune entitled “Verizon’s tough call“, which again confirmed what I’ve long suspected:

….. [Craig Moffett, an analyst with Bernstein Research] noted, Verizon primary customer lines were cancelled at a rate of 10.6% last year as more customers switched to cable or wireless phone services. The pace of that decline is accelerating, according to Moffett, who points out that Verizon’s primary residential phone lines have dropped by 27% since 2002.

Home phone service is still Verizon’s biggest business, but it now accounts for only 29% of sales, according to Moffett. Verizon reported revenues of $93.5 billion in 2007.

There is a popular saying (I don’t know where it originated) that one definition of insanity is to do the same things you’ve always done and expect different results.  The phone companies have traditionally tried to nickel-and-dime people to death, while the new technology companies have realized that people want all-inclusive bundles.

It is insane to think that you can continue to charge upwards of ten cents a minute for long distance service and that people will just pay it.

It’s crazy to charge over five dollars a month for a “custom calling service” such as Caller ID and think that people won’t find a competing offer that includes ALL of the custom calling features at NO extra charge attractive.

It is insanity to hit people up with bogus extra charges on their phone bill (for example, the charge for a three-way call if you don’t subscribe to three-way calling and don’t leave the receiver on-hook long enough between calls, so that the switch thinks you made a three-way call) and think that people won’t resent it.

My point is, the big phone companies seem to think they can run their wireline business as they have for the past 100 years, only with LESS customer service and (in some cases) with deteriorating wireline facilities, and still keep their wireline business.

Or, maybe not. Maybe the real goal is to move customers off of regulated wireline services and onto unregulated, supposedly competitive wireless service.  And yes, wireless IS competitive today - but what happens if AT&T and Verizon decide to merge? An administration like the one we have today would probably allow it to happen!

Anyway, for many years I’ve tried to warn people about the big phone companies. You may have noticed that this blog has tried to find an audience and sputtered, and as a result I’ve been less inspired to write (and when I have written it’s been about things that interest me, rather than the nominal topic of this blog). When you look at the list of top posts (that is, the ones that are most read, usually as a result of people arriving here from search engines) you see that a high percentage are NOT “on topic” for this blog.  I go back to the definition of insanity - for me to continue posting telecommunications-related material and expect that this blog will suddenly become popular is insane.  I know there are better blogs on the subject, with more dedicated writers (some of which are listed in the sidebar).

As I get older, I find myself less drawn to the topic matter of this blog.  So, while I’m not ruling out the possibility of future posts should I get fired up about some topic, you can expect them to be fewer and further between - and possibly even less on-topic.  I’d rather write about things I can get enthused about, and while VoIP was a topic I was very enthused about in its infancy, it seems to have already become a mature industry (I am still enthused about VoIP, but find there is little new to write about on the subject).  A surprising number of the early players in that industry are still around (Sunrocket and a couple other notable failures not withstanding) and some are thriving, particularly the ones that don’t spend a lot of money on advertising and prefer to let word-of-mouth and customer recommendations sell their service.

There is a new Macintosh-related blog, called CrabApple Forest. The owner of that blog would like me to contribute articles to that site but at the moment I can’t get much more enthused about writing on that subject than on the nominal topics of this blog. One thing I have noticed is that there’s kind of a general malaise that seems to be affecting a lot of people these days - it’s just a lot harder to get things done, though not everyone seems to be affected. I don’t know if that’s what’s affecting me, or if it’s just a general depression that seems to afflict me every spring (thankfully it’s usually very short-lived). Point is, don’t be surprised if posts to this blog become fewer and further between (again). And to those few who have continued to read this blog, I thank you for hanging in there!

EDIT:  Note the date on this post - that means you probably shouldn’t take it all that seriously! Also, please note that I have no control over the content on that number, so if it changes or goes away (and it might at some point) don’t blame me - I’m just passing along the latest Internet meme.

You simply must call and hear this important message - it will only take a couple of minutes.  Alternately, or if you are hearing-impaired, you can get the vital news by firing up a terminal program and typing:

telnet psyduck.timminstechnologies.com

This might not work if your organization or ISP blocks the use of telnet (which they should not, but you never know).  By the way, the call to the 248 number is charged as a regular toll call if you dial it in the normal way, but it’s a registered ENUM number, so if you can make a local call to a Sipbroker dial-in anywhere in the world, you should be able to first dial that number and then *013-1-248-434-5508 and get the same result without paying the normal toll charge.

Ah, but you are of the video generation.  Well, if you must have moving pictures with your vital information, then go here. Be sure to pass this along to your friends, it may make a huge difference in your world view and your outlook on life.  Or not.  But you will thank me for having passed this along!

Image by Simone ver.β via FlickrI wish this were an April Fools’ joke, but unfortunately it is not. This is from ConsumerAffairs.com:

There have been a number of health warnings over the years about possible radiation risks associated with the use of mobile phones. In case anyone is not taking these warnings seriously, British health researcher Dr. Vini Khurana puts it in language designed to get your attention:

“Mobile phones could have health consequences far greater than asbestos and smoking,” he said.

Khurana – a neurosurgeon who has published more than 30 scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has written a paper based on the research, which is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

Full story here:
Researcher: Cell Phones ‘More Dangerous Than Smoking’

Personally, I’ve suspected this might be a problem for years.  I never minded using the first generation cordless phones, that operated at much lower frequencies (and consequently longer bandwidths) - you know, the ones with the telescoping antenna - but my first cordless phone was taken out by a lightning strike (the base, not the handset) and ever since then I’ve tended to avoid using any sort of cordless phone.  If, for some reason, I have to use one, I tend to keep the conversation as short as possible, and hold the receiver as far as I can from my head (without making it so I can’t hear the other party). I really dislike the 2.4 GHz models and above - that’s microwave frequencies, and you know what microwaves do to food when concentrated.

I have a feeling that the old cellular “bag phones” were probably safer than anything since (provided you didn’t hold the phone in your lap!), because they kept the transmitter a respectable distance from vital body organs, and in most cases had their antenna on the roof of the car, putting a respectable distance (and/or metal shielding) between the user’s head and the antenna.

I don’t know if cell phone customers will ever get the full truth about this, but I doubt it will be trumpeted in their billing statements.  I’d be willing to bet that the cellular industry is already discreetly making inquiries to try and located some “respectable” scientific laboratory that will be willing to go on the record say that it’s all nonsense (it’s not as though large corporations have never paid to get the results they want).  Cellular calling is a HUGE industry worldwide, and the last thing the cell phone companies want is their customers spooked about using their phones.  Of course, they could do the right thing and build phones that don’t put excessive radiation next to vital organs, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.  I’m betting they’ll pay well for the favorable (but dubious) “scientific” studies attempting to discredit Dr. Khurana’s research. I hope I’m wrong, but phone companies rarely disappoint me when I think they are probably going to put profit above doing the right thing.

I have to admit, I am one of those people who dislikes Linux for one major reason: Whenever you ask for help in any online forum, the knowledgeable people all seem to be command-line devotees, and they invariably give you instructions that involve typing long, arcane commands into the command line. I hate using the command line - if I had wanted to use a command line, I’d never have moved away from MS-DOS, and i cannot understand why Linux geeks insist on using it, and on trying to get others to use it.  Even users of Linux distributions such as Ubuntu have found that when they go online asking how to do some function that could easily be accomplished using one of the GUI tools, often some obnoxious twit helpful person will reply by giving a bunch of stuff (that makes no sense at all to the uninitiated) to type in at the command line. One of the things I like most about Mac OS X is that you almost never have to do anything from a terminal prompt if you don’t want to, and Mac users seem to have a healthy disdain for using a computer as if it were still the 1970’s.

Long ago, when I was using MS-DOS, there was one tool that I had to have on any system I was using: Norton Commander.  The original, dual-pane file manager that made it oh-so-easy to do typical file manipulations like copying and moving files, viewing and editing text files, launching executables, etc.  without typing in DOS commands.  Norton Commander was such a great program that it inspired similar programs on other platforms, such as Total Commander under Windows, and the cross-platform muCommander that runs on just about anything (if it has Java installed).  In the Linux world, KDE users have Krusader, and Gnome users have Gnome Commander. Mac OS X users have a number of choices, including the aforementioned muCommander and Xfolders, both of which are free (there are other options that cost money, and that I frankly think are overpriced).

However, despite your best intentions, there may come a time when you find yourself working at a shell prompt.  Maybe you are working with a Linux server, or on a Mac, maybe you can’t get OS X to come up but you are able to get to a terminal prompt (sadly, this has happened to me twice after Leopard upgrades - Leopard is better in many ways than Tiger was, but the first two versions were definitely not as stable, which makes me wonder why Apple is so willing to cast stones at Vista in some of their online advertising - but I digress). More commonly, you are getting a permissions error on some file and can’t understand why - that’s very rare on the Mac, but it happens, and now you find yourself in the terminal trying to remember how to change permissions or ownership on a file (by the way, in most cases you should be doing this by right-clicking on the file in Finder,  then clicking on “Get Info” in the context menu, and then using the Sharing & Permissions section at the bottom of the information panel. But there are occasions when nothing else seems to work, and you want to go a bit deeper into the guts of the system). It is at those times when Midnight Commander may be the tool you want.

However, up until now there has not been a really easy way to install Midnight Commander on a Mac running OS X (at least not that I’ve seen).  But now, there is a package by Rudá Moura called Rudix, which is described this way:

Rudix features a world class collection of pre-compiled and ready to use Unix compatible software which are not available from a fresh installation of Mac OS X but are popular among other Unix environments. Here you can find utilities, programming languages, libraries and tools delivered as standard Mac OS X packages.

Now, I hear some of you “cut-my-teeth-on-Unix” types screaming, “What about MacPorts? What about the Fink project?”  Those are all well and good if that’s your cup of tea, but they require a much higher lever of Unix “geekiness” to install, and they add a lot of code that the typical user doesn’t need.  Rudix will let you add a whole bunch of Unix utilities if you really want to do that, but if you only want a few needed utilities then the “Custom Install” button in the Rudix installation lets you select exactly what you want, and no more.

So here is how you would install Midnight Commander in Mac OS X, using Rudix:

1. Go to http://www.rudix.org/ and download the installer package.
2. Once you have it downloaded, double click on it to begin the installation.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to install the entire package if you don’t want to.  You should see a screen that looks like this (click on the thumbnails to enlarge):
   
3. Click on Continue and you may get another screen asking you which volume to install the software on - if you get that, make a selection and then you should get this screen:
   
4. Click on Customize - do not click on Install or you will get the whole thing, which is probably not what you want!  That will get you to this screen:
   
5. One minor nit about this program - when you click “Customize” you obviously want to select certain packages, so why is everything checked by default? Anyway, go through and UNcheck everything but gettext, glib, and mc.  gettext and glib are dependencies that Midnight Commander needs to run, and are shown in the above screenshot (note they indicate an upgrade only because I had already installed everything when I took these screenshots - for you, they should indicate that these packages are being installed). Then you will want to keep scrolling down and unchecking everything else, except mc:
   
6. Now click on Install (not “Standard Install”). You will get a popup window asking you to enter your password, so do it and then sit back and wait a few seconds. When the installer is finished, try typing mc from a terminal window, but note that you may need to complete step 7 before it will work correctly.
7. The Midnight Commander package (if you view it individually) advises this:
   

   Post installation

   Open a Terminal application and become root to edit file /etc/profile. Add /usr/local to $PATH environment variable. The profile should appear like this:

   # System-wide .profile for sh(1)

   PATH=”/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin”
   export PATH

   if [ "${BASH-no}" != "no" ]; then
   [ -r /etc/bashrc ] && . /etc/bashrc
   fi

   This does NOT mean you should copy the path line shown above verbatim.  Go into a terminal window and enter this:

   echo $PATH

   This will show you your current path.  What they are telling you is to make sure that /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin are already in your current path, and if they are not there to add them in /etc/profile by adding just the two lines that begin with PATH= (but use YOUR path with the necessary additions), and export PATH.

   I found that the easiest way edit /etc/profile from a command prompt was this:
   sudo nano /etc/profile
   But, of course, you can use your favorite plain text editor in place of nano. After making your edits (don’t forget to make sure you have the opening and closing quotation marks in the appropriate places), close and re-open the terminal window (so it will use the newly-modified path), then try mc again.

Once you have installed Midnight Commander, you will realize that Rudix can be used to easily install many other utilities commonly found on Unix/Linux systems. Personally, I would not go hog wild on this - I’d only install the utilities you actually need, as you need them.  It is easy enough to re-run the Rudix installer when you need another package or two. One of those available packages is inadyn, which is described as “a free, small, easy portable DynDNS client”, and which was the subject of a previous article on this site. I didn’t install that on my Mac, but I did install wget, because so many scripts (such as those written in Perl) expect it to be present.

Three more quick points:  The Rudix installer package doesn’t have an uninstaller.  However, if you use the Rudix installer to install the package named “Rudix”, described as “Command line tool to manage Rudix’s packages” (oooh, how I hate even mentioning that!) you can then uninstall any package by using this syntax from the dreaded command prompt:

sudo rudix -r unwanted.pkg

Also, if for some reason you really can’t (or don’t want to) get the entire Rudix installer, you can grab the individual packages.  There is a list here and the downloads are at Sourceforge.

Finally, if after installing a package you get a message like dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/…, that means that there is some library that needs to be installed (such as gettext and glib with Midnight Commander).  If you are totally stuck, you can send the author of Rudix an e-mail (see the last Q&A in his FAQ for a link) and maybe he will be able to tell you which packages you need.  I wrote to him when Midnight Commander wouldn’t install and got a speedy reply telling me which additional packages I needed to install - YMMV, but I have a feeling that most of the packages are either complete, or will make it obvious which libraries they are missing. Midnight Commander is a bit more complex than your average command line tool, after all, so it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a slight bit harder to install (but still very easy if you know how, and hopefully this article has shown you how!).

Edit March 28, 2008: I made an interesting discovery tonight.  Normally I use iTerm as my terminal program, and Midnight Commander runs fine in that. What it does not seem to run so well under is the Terminal.app program that comes with OS X. What specifically does not work in Terminal.app, at least on my system, is the mouse.  Under iTerm, mouse clicks get passed to Midnight Commander in the normal manner, but under Terminal.app that doesn’t seem to be the case.  So, for the “best user experience”, so to speak, I’d suggest downloading and installing iTerm, which has a lot of other nice features you’ll probably appreciate (and did I mention it’s free?).

Edit April 1, 2008: If, for some reason, you want to modify the color theme of Midnight Commander, here are a couple of blog posts that show how to do that:

• Midnight Commander coloring
• Midnight Commander Color Themes

And, the Midnight Commander manual is another good source of information on this subject.

Command line haters of the world, untype!

photo credit: bcostin

PLEASE NOTE: This  article has been updated as of April 10, 2008.  This now works with a Mac or Win32 computer (and Linux computers with libnotify installed or readily available, such as those running Ubuntu) and has been updated to reflect that fact. Also, please note that previous versions may have failed on devices/phones with more than two lines - this is (hopefully) fixed as of version 0.7.

If all of the following are true:

You have a Macintosh computer with OS X installed, or a PC with any 32-bit version of Windows installed (basically Windows ‘98 through XP), or any version of Linux with libnotify installed

You have Growl (if you have a Mac) or Snarl (if you have a PC) notifications installed

You have a Linksys or Sipura VoIP adapter on your local subnet or home network and receive calls over it

You would like to see Growl, Snarl or libnotify popups on your computer when a call comes in, showing the caller’s name and number, along with the line that the call came in on and the time and date the call arrived (in case you are out when the call comes in)

You have previously run Perl scripts on your computer, OR are reasonably good at following instructions and problem-solving

AND you are willing to run a script that comes with NO WARRANTY whatsoever (if it breaks, you can keep all the pieces)

Then download this file (now at version 0.91), unzip it and read the Instructions.txt file in the folder appropriate to your computer.

This script is being offered under the GNU General Public License, so if you want to modify it to work on other platforms, you can do that under certain conditions (see the Instructions.txt file for details). Mainly, I’d hope that you’d contribute the modifications back (and please leave a comment on this article if you do that).

I don’t have any kind of regular web page up for this yet, for one thing it’s very rough (very little error-checking) and for another I’m very tired, having spent way too many late nights trying to get this to work. So this post will be more terse than most of my posts, but I think most everything you need to know is in Instructions.txt (and for Mac users, the “How to run at login.rtfd” file) inside the .zip file. Feel free to repost this information to other forums if you think anyone else might be interested.

For those Mac users that wish this were an app: I understand that there is an app called Platypus that allows Perl scripts (and any other types of scripts) to be converted to OS X app bundles. However, what it does not seem to include is any way to specify the command line options, or to load any missing Perl modules. So for now, this script will probably only be useable by those with sufficient knowledge to run a Perl script on their Mac. If I were a bit more knowledgeable, I’d build a preference pane to go in System Preferences, and then have the script read that for its configuration options. But I still have no idea how to make an app install missing Perl modules, particularly when OS X does not come with “make” installed until and unless the Developer Tools are installed.

Starting in Version 0.7 there is a minimal logging function, allowing all detected incoming calls (whether answered or not) to be saved to a text file and/or a comma-quote delimited file. I probably could support other simple formats, but don’t even think about asking for anything more complex (like a rather humorous friend of mine who asked for MySQL integration - considering that he knows how little knowledge I have about Perl programming, and that I have even less knowledge about databases, I’m sure he thought it extremely amusing to make that request). The one thing I really don’t like about offering these scripts in Perl is that it requires the user to know how to install modules from CPAN (or an alternative source if using Win32), but I barely know how to do this stuff in Perl and don’t know any other languages (well, except for QBASIC under MSDOS, but that’s even less compatible across platforms than Perl!).

Starting in Version 0.9 you can use a plain-text file of number-name substitutions, so (for example) if calls from a particular number always display a cryptic Caller ID name, you can change them to say “Uncle Bob” (or some other name if Bob’s not your Uncle, or it’s someone else’s number!). Read the sample config file to see the file formats. Note that the plain text file of number-name substitutions is a separate file, not a section of the optional configuration file, and also note that you must enter the numbers exactly as your VoIP provider sends them (in other words, if they send 8005551234 and you use 18005551234 or 800-555-1234 it will NOT match!).

Starting in Version 0.91 you can use a plain-text file of number-path/file substitutions, so (for example) if calls from a particular number are always from Uncle Bob, you can display Uncle Bob’s picture as the icon whenever a call arrives from that number. Read the sample config file for more information. Note that the plain text file of number-path/file substitutions is a separate file, not a section of the optional configuration file, and also note once again that you must enter the numbers exactly as your VoIP provider sends them.

photo credit: thinkpanama

David Lazarus of the The Los Angeles Times blasts Verizon today for withholding contract terms from customers until AFTER they have signed up for service - and some of the contract terms are ones that I sure wouldn’t agree to:

Verizon not upfront on contract terms - Los Angeles Times

Excerpt:

For years, credit card issuers have gotten away with withholding contracts from customers until they actually have the plastic in their hands — a practice that denies many people a fair chance to look under the hood for onerous terms and conditions.Now it looks like Verizon has adopted the same technique.

…..

What really struck [Torrance, California resident Sandy Lough] was the discovery that to receive the promised discount for her bundled plan, she’d have to go online and agree to a 2,000-word “bundle service agreement” and a 7,000-word terms of service for Internet access.

This was the first time she was being presented with the full contract for her new FiOS setup, and the service had already been installed and activated.

The LA Times article goes on to mention some of the more notable terms of the contract.  The interesting thing is that it would appear that this is not simply an oversight - that perhaps Verizon deliberately withholds contract terms from customers until they’ve already committed to the service:

As for why the full contract is withheld until after FiOS has been installed in a person’s home, [Verizon spokesman Cliff Lee] said only that “this is the way we’ve found that works.”

Now, I Am Not A Lawyer, but it seems to me that in the old days a court would never enforce a contract imposed “after the fact”, that is, after the deal had been consummated and the customer had signed on the dotted line.  What has happened to make large corporations think they can simply change the deal at their whim, after a customer has already signed on the dotted line, without giving the customer the same right? Did someone slip a new amendment to the Constitution when I wasn’t looking, saying that corporations can do any sly legal maneuvering they want, and the courts are forced to go along with it, while individual consumers are put at a disadvantage?

This is one reason I’m not making too big a stink about Verizon not offering FiOS in Michigan.  Sure, it would be nice to have those high speeds, delivered via fiber.  But in the long run, I’d rather see a competitive market of many smaller broadband providers than one or two large mammoth corporations that seem to think they can do whatever they want to the consumer.

I know the amendment I’d like to see put into the constitution:

“Only an actual, physical human being shall be given the rights of a person under the law.”

Like I said, I’m not a lawyer, but that about sums it up.  It would mean that no large corporation, with almost infinite legal resources and billions of dollars behind them, would be able to use their wealth to put real people at a disadvantage, because it would be presumed that only the real person had any rights.  Think about that for a while, and how much it would change things from the way things are today!

Edit:  Additional commentary at DSLreports

If you are a Michigan resident (and especially if you live in Clinton Township) you might want to view this video from the Alliance for Community Media site:

Connecticut Network’s U-Verse vs. Cable Comparison Test in Clinton, MI - Alliance for Community Media on blip.tv

This is the description from the site:

Connecticut Network’s U-Verse vs. Cable Comparison Test in Clinton, MI
This is a side-by-side comparison test of PEG channel navigation on a cable system and on AT&T’s U-Verse.

The test was performed in Clinton, Michigan, by Paul Giguere, President of Connecticut Network, for his testimony submitted to Connecticut’s Joint Energy & Technology Committee Hearing on HB 5814, a bill amending an existing statewide video franchising law.

Gigurere’s testimony can be seen in full here: http://blip.tv/file/747719

The problem with the above video is that the sound seems to disappear after about forty seconds, at least on my system. However, that’s not the case in this version that you can download (if you right click on the link):

Video produced by Connecticut Network - all rights reserved.
http://www.ctn.state.ct.us/compare/AT&T U-verse Launch Tests.wmv

There are two apparent issues here.  One is the relative ease and speed of actually tuning in the channel.  The other is the picture quality - even in the compressed .wmv file linked above, there is a noticeable difference in picture quality between the cable version of the channel and the U-Verse version (note the comparison at the end of the video).

Of course, I did not see these tests being performed, so I don’t know if there are any other factors that may have entered into this comparison (such as unfamiliarity with the navigation of the U-Verse channels).  But since this test was conducted in Michigan, and has been entered as evidence in hearings in Connecticut, I just thought maybe Michigan residents (and perhaps some of our lawmakers that seem to routinely give AT&T everything they want, few questions asked) might like to see this.

There’s one other factor to consider:  When I mentioned I was thinking about posting something about this to a friend, his immediate reaction was, “Who cares? Nobody watches those channels anyway!” And for all I know, he may be right… I doubt those channels have high viewership, except perhaps when there is some contentious issue before a local body of government, or some such thing. Or, perhaps, there’s a hot high school football game on, for those that can’t be bothered to walk or drive the few blocks to the local high school stadium.

photo credit: ThisIsIt2

The Consumerist does a pretty good job of covering the Telecommunications industry (among many others) in regard to customer relations.  Every so often have a little gem like this one:

Insiders: 7 Confessions Of A Verizon DSL Tech Support Rep
Here’s the one that I found funny:

1. We Must Implant The Word Outstanding In Customer Brain’s To Score Higher On Satisfaction Surveys
This is something I always found hilarious, and I am not even entirely sure if they still do it, but agents are required to mention at the end of the call something along the lines of “I hope I’ve provided you with outstanding service today”, the stress always being on the word Outstanding. Now why is this you ask? Well Verizon contracts out a company to call back customers who have recently called into Technical Support and perform a survey about the service they received. The customer is supposed to rate the service from “poor” to “outstanding”. So basically they want to embed that word in your mind so that you rate them higher.

So here’s the deal:  Next time you get a call asking you to rate your Verizon service call, say something like, “Well, the rep implanted in my brain that I’m supposed to use the word outstanding, so mindless zombie that I am, I guess I had outstanding service.  That is what I’m supposed to say, right?”  Then if the call in fact actually went badly, you can add something like, “Except it didn’t really feel that way.  It felt like poor/fair/only good service to me.  But the representative said she was providing me with outstanding service, so maybe that’s what I got!”  Bonus points if you can get the survey taker to laugh out loud!

Go here.

This article has been updated.  Please go here.

photo credit: billjacobus1

When cable companies try to become phone companies, they don’t always get it right…

Charter Communications announced late Monday what many of its customers already had figured out: Some of its Internet-based telephone lines in mid-Michigan have not been able to receive incoming calls from local and long-distance callers.

Over the past week, many concerned Charter customers have been told by customer service representatives that the problem has not been identified and they do not know when it will be fixed.

Full story here:
Phone service lacking for many Charter customers - The Morning Sun

photo credit: orbz

Quote from the site:

“Where’s my cell phone? I swear it was just right here…” Are the words often muttered as you frantically look for your cell phone only to find it hidden underneath a pile of laundry, in some obscure pocket, or in the car.

We hope you find it eventually; why not find it NOW?

Simply enter the lost phone number and listen for it to ring.
When you find it, hang up and you’re done!

Where’s My Cell Phone - Find Your Misplaced Cell Phone Fast

Of course this may not help if you phone is set to vibrate, and it might be easier to just pick up another phone and call yours, if one is available.  But that’s the point - sometimes another phone isn’t readily available, while a web connection is. If you travel with a laptop and a cell phone, your laptop could help you find that cell phone that you dropped behind the bed, or wherever. We haven’t tested this, so you may want to try it before relying on it.  Thanks to Tom Keating’s blog for the tip on this one.

photo credit: HAMACHI!

I came across this rather interesting item today:

The Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit APRU at Goldsmiths, University of London is currently engaged in a collaborative research project with Dr Rupert Sheldrake investigating the phenomenon of “telephone telepathy”. This is the fairly common experience of feeling that you know who is calling you on the telephone before you answer it - even on occasions when you had no particular reason to expect a call from that person. Obviously, skeptics and believers in the paranormal have different explanations for what is going on in such situations, but Rupert Sheldrake claims to have demonstrated that a genuinely paranormal phenomenon may be in operation here. The only way to find out is to carry out well controlled empirical studies and that is what researchers at the APRU are doing.

Read the full article at Public Parapsychology (and if you live in the U.K., you may want to volunteer).

The reason I found this interesting is that although I am normally oblivious to anything “paranormal”, I think I may have had a peculiar form of this when I was a kid.  Bear in mind that back in those days we were on a four-party line, with a manual switchboard (they didn’t get dial where I lived until 1960), but it was a Michigan Bell exchange and all the ring current came from the same local ringing generators.  Our signal on the party line was two short rings, and it was the same for any incoming call, local or long distance, and we rarely got long distance calls. Nevertheless, it seemed that whenever one of my aunts or anyone else was calling long distance, I’d hear the first double ring and immediately say “that’s a long distance call.” My folks would ask how I knew and I’d just say that the ring somehow sounded different, although it really didn’t - on an objective level I knew it was exactly the same ring, yet somehow it “sounded different” to me (and not to anyone else) when it was an incoming long distance call.

I think I had pretty much outgrown this by the time the new crossbar exchange replaced the old manual switchboard, and as I say, I am normally a person who couldn’t see anything supernatural in a haunted graveyard on Halloween (I could probably walk through the most haunted place on the planet and not see or feel a thing, although I’m not in any great rush to test that theory).  But when I was a small child, and a long distance call came in, somehow I just knew.  So, I will be very interested to see how these experiments turn out.

photo credit: Will Foster

Russell Shaw of ZDnet received an e-mail from a Packet8 customer (note, a Packet8 customer, not a Vonage customer). Here’s the gist of it:

I don’t subscribe to Vonage, I use Packet8 for my VOIP. Somehow Vonage assigned my Packet8 phone no. to one of their new customers. I called Vonage and they told me that since they had a request to “port” the number, they did it.

I called their customer that received my phone # and advised them that Packet8 was in the process of taking back the #. They advised me that they didn’t ask for the #, Vonage gave them a random phone #. Today is Wednesday. I have been without phone service since Monday. When I called Vonage today, the rep advised me that they won’t be taking any further action on the matter.

Full story here:
Reader: Vonage assigned my Packet8 number, and I’m not even a Vonage customer | IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband | ZDNet.com

Hey Vonage, assuming this reader is correct, you screwed up! Saying you won’t be taking any further action on the matter is entirely the wrong answer. More than likely, he’s not just going to go away - he wants his phone number back! And if you won’t give it to him, he might contact the F.C.C. or the Better Business Bureau, and eventually you may wind up being forced to give the number back, and then your customer (the one you gave the number to) is going to be unhappy.  So why not admit you screwed up, and fix the problem while your customer hasn’t yet developed any emotional attachment to the number?  You might have to give your customer a month of free service or something in compensation for the inconvenience, but wouldn’t that be better than getting called out as a bunch of screwups in various blogs and online forums?

Vonage can run all the cute TV ads they want, but when people go online to research their service and see things like this, that gives them a reason to consider Vonage competitors (as well they should - in my humble opinion, there are better deals in VoIP service to be found, whether you are shopping on price or on quality of service). Vonage needs to fix this problem post haste!

Looks like this is all but a done deal, for better or worse (better because VoIP companies will now have the legal right to have access to 911 answering centers, worse because it’s probably going to cost them, and that cost will be passed on to the customer, and I’ll bet most of that money will somehow wind up in the pockets of the incumbent telcos):

The Senate recently approved a bill requiring VoIP providers to ensure 911 access to customers. S428, the IP-Enabled Voice Communications and Public Safety Act, gives VoIP interconnection access just like the traditional phone companies have—making sure that 911 calls made over VoIP lines will reach a live operator every time.

Full story here:
911 Bill Passed by U.S. Senate | About VoIP