Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog

One problem that the folks at Dish Network and DirecTV have is that there is increasing pressure on their customers to buy a “bundle” from their local cable company that includes cable television, broadband, and sometimes telephone via cable (like VoIP, except it doesn’t use the public Internet). Many folks like their home satellite service for TV, but have discovered or have heard that satellite delivered broadband just doesn’t work well, due both to latency (the time it takes the signal to reach the satellite and bounce back to earth, which is quite noticeable on interactive games and VoIP calls) and to limited capacity, which causes satellite providers to impose usage caps that are very unpopular with customers. So if customers want decent-quality broadband service, they still have to deal with the local cable or telephone utility, which then tries to sell them a bundled service package (and often penalizes them with higher broadband prices if they reject the “bundle”).

The new threat is that the phone companies are starting to offer their own video services, in effect creating a second cable company in some areas. Their broadband service is often cheaper than the cable company’s, and in some states they’ve managed to get legislation passed that exempts them from having to get a separate franchise in each city where they offer video, giving them a leg up on the cable company and also (in some cases) exempting them from paying local franchise fees.

Even though they are direct competitors, it now appears that DirecTV and EchoStar (the latter is the parent company of Dish Network) are going to join together to counter these threats by building a nationwide wireless broadband network, according to an article at TheStreet.com, which also states,

Seeking to keep pace with peers in the telecom and cable TV industries, DirecTV is building a network to offer its own wireless broadband services to consumers, according to two people familiar with the deal. These people say that DirecTV is working with EchoStar and seeking final bids from tower companies in a push to put the network together.

Wireless broadband would give home satellite operators the ability to deliver low-latency broadband and VoIP service to customers, but in addition, depending on the available bandwidth, it could allow these companies to offer localized channels to their customers (local access and educational channels that are now carried, often as requirement of a franchise agreement, by cable TV systems). Of course they may want to be careful about what they initially choose to offer because once theory prove they can offer something like that, it won’t be long before cities would be trying to force them to add those channels AND collect additional taxes and fees to fund the production of those programs. Many people switch to home satellite in the first place in order to avoid paying those local taxes and fees.

If anybody can pull this off, these are the companies that can do it, and the obvious advantage to customers is that they’d probably offer a nationwide wireless broadband and VoIP service that customers could access from anywhere that they’ve built out their system, at far less than what the cell companies are charging. If they do this right, this could literally change the face of communications in the United States – imagine being able to take your laptop computer or portable VoIP handset and use it almost everywhere, at a reasonable price.

I also expect the phone and cable companies to try and throw up roadblocks, but DirecTV and EchoStar are no strangers to dealing with legislators and regulators. These companies are, in fact, big enough that they could scare the daylights out of people like Ed Whitacre (who still keeps spouting off about how “content providers should be paying for the use of the network“) and the other “baby Bell” executives and big cable executives who love their respective monopolies and duopolies.

And now I’m going to make a suggestion to these companies – feel free to pass it on to them if you know any of the executives at DirecTV or EchoStar. The suggestion is, learn all you can about “mesh networks” and consider using them. Think about it, in most urban and semi-rural areas you have small-dish customers all over, and each one has a dish mounted on their roof or on a pole in their yard. Imagine if on the back side of each dish, there was a small box attached that contained the transceiver to make it a node in the local mesh network. Power it from the customer’s receiver (the same way the LNB is powered) or a “booster” power supply, and leave a small vertical antenna peeking out above the dish to seek out and connect to other customers in the neighborhood. If these companies did this, they could cut their requirements for high-powered equipment dramatically AND provide better coverage, except in places so rural that customers are miles apart.

I truly hope these companies can pull this off; the competition can only make things better for customers.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

OMAHA, Neb., and LONGMONT, Colo., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — West Corporation (Nasdaq: WSTC), a leading provider of outsourced communication solutions, and Intrado Inc. (Nasdaq: TRDO), a global provider of integrated data and telecommunications solutions, today jointly announced that they have entered into an agreement whereby West will acquire Intrado for $26.00 per share in cash.

The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the second quarter and will be funded with cash on hand, West’s existing bank credit facility and additional debt. The total cost before transaction expense is approximately $465 million, net of option proceeds and cash on hand. Closing is subject to Intrado shareholder approval and customary closing conditions. Upon completion of the deal, Intrado will be integrated into West’s Communications Services segment.

Intrado is North America’s foremost provider of 9-1-1 infrastructure systems and services, as well as innovative solutions for telecommunications providers and public safety organizations. Based in Longmont, Colorado, Intrado provides uninterrupted mission critical services to all major United States telecommunications providers.

As many readers of this blog are already aware, Intrado provides 911 service to not only traditional wireline phone companies, but also several VoIP companies. This isn’t something I’d normally mention in this blog, except that I wonder if this will affect what VoIP companies have to pay and/or the level of service they receive. It’s one of those situations where end users might not notice any change at all, or then again, there could be changes in pricing or quality of service.

One thing to be hoped is that the new parent company will redouble efforts to insure that Intrado’s databases are accurate. From time to time there have been notable failues of the 911 system, such as an incident in January, 1994 where “paramedics mistakenly were sent to a Menasha [Wisconsin] address while a Neenah man died of a heart attack at his home” (source: Appleton Post-Crescent) that may have been caused in part by errors in Intrado’s database. Customers should have some way to verify that the address information stored in Intrado’s database is accurate, and that their 911 calls aren’t being sent to the wrong county.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a very interesting story on their web site. Seems the Senate Commerce Committee was holding a hearing last week on the proposed “Broadcast Flag” and “Audio Flag”, both of which would restrict people from making fair use of content that, in many cases, they’ve already bought and paid for. The industries that want to impose these onerous restrictions on all of us probably thought they were going to waltz into the hearing and get their way, as so often happens.

Now, you may recall me saying in another post that “When something can bite a politician in the butt, they are usually fairly enthusiastic about passing a law to make it illegal.” Well, it works in reverse too – when someone wants the legislature to pass a law that might cause trouble down the road for a politician, the legislators sometimes lose enthusiasm for it fairly quickly, and in some cases that’s a good thing for all of us.

Quoting from the EFF article:

The second revelation, dropped into the later discussion of the RIAA’s audio flag, was that Senator Stevens’ daughter bought him an iPod.

This is unhappy news for the RIAA. Once again, their representative was forced to burst into praises of MP3 players (a technology his organization attempted to sue out of existence in 1998).

And when Stevens asked whether with the audio flag in place he would be able to record from the radio and put the shows onto his iPod: that’s when the RIAA’s Mitch Bainwol really began to sweat.

With that simple question, the octogenarian Senator encapsulated arguments about place-shifting, interoperability, and fair use that would have taken whole federal dockets to explain a few years ago.

Even more damning was Senator Sununu’s follow-up question, in which he asked if, post-flag, the Senator might record three songs from the radio today, and listen to only one of them again tomorrow. Of course, under the RIAA’s proposed controls, you may not: this is “disaggregation” in their language. This flag, which was sold to Congress to impede piracy, appeared to be designed primarily to control and inconvenience law-abiding, ripping, mixing, modern-day Senators.

Although we don’t know yet how this will ultimately play out, maybe there’s an obvious lesson here – when legislators themselves use a particular technology, they are far less likely to want to pass laws that would restrict how they themselves can use that technology, and the products they own that run under that technology.

And that makes me wonder – if the Senators that decide telecommunications policy (or that appropriate the funds for the Federal Communications Commission) were VoIP users, would the FCC be as quick to pass laws that place restrictions on VoIP?

What would it cost a VoIP company to offer a legislator maybe a dozen virtual numbers in the cities of the legislator’s district where the VoIP company offers service, brought into the nearest local constituent office on one or two lines of a VoIP adapter, with the ability to reroute the call to the next nearest office (or maybe to the Washington, D.C. office) if the nearest local constituent office didn’t pick up? I’m not even sure if that sort of gift would be legal, but if it were, it sure might help convince some legislators of the value of VoIP, especially those that have multiple constituent offices that aren’t always staffed at the same times.

No phone company is going to give a legislator a single line or two that be called using local phone numbers in several cities throughout the district, and that will ring phones in, say, three local constituent offices simultaneously (handing the call off to whichever one picks up first) and if the call isn’t answered after three or four rings, transfer the call to the D.C. office. But some VoIP companies could set something like that up quite easily. It’s just a thought from a very sleep-deprived mind…

Jeff Pulver noticed my post entitled, “Cell phones can’t always provide E911 location, so why does the FCC have unrealistic expectations for VoIP?” and had some very nice things to say about it (thank you, Jeff), after which he added this:

“….. when will the FCC get around to reviewing my languishing Wireless E-911 Phase III Petition?

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/003322.html

“I filed a Petition with the FCC on Sept. 20, 2001 to consider an E-911 Phase III initiative to improve in-building mobile coverage. I was motivated by the horror of 9/11. I worked at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities at One World Trade Center until 1996. Cantor lost seven hundred employees that day, including many very close friends and former colleagues. And I resolved to promote better emergency response capabilities in buildings. I am convinced that many of my former colleagues and friends did not know what to do when the planes struck the World Trade Center. Back in 1993, after the World Trade Center truck bombing, we were told to head to the 108th floor and go to the roof. I am sure many folks did just that and that may have contributed to their inability to evacuate the building. Sadly, the need for improved indoors tracking was clearly demonstrated during the tragic events of September 11, 2001 at the New York World Trade Center.

“So, four-and-a-half years ago, I petitioned the FCC to consider issuing an E-911 Phase III directive aimed at reducing the response time for wireless emergency 911 calls in large buildings and similarly structured interiors. Improving emergency response time in these environments would entail new accuracy requirements for locating mobile phones in indoors settings.

“Now we live in a world where only the VoIP providers are Federally-obligated to provide fully-compliant E-911 obligations to residential and business users. 81 Million mobile users do not have E-911 today. And we still have not seen whether the FCC will grant another extension to the wireless industry on the inclusion of GPS chips in mobile handsets (although we expect a decision any day now). It would certainly be telling if the deep-pocketed wireless industry receives yet another extension, given the leeway the wireless industry has had over the years and the apparent reluctance to grant any latitude to the VoIP industry. Rumor has that the FCC will give them some sort of waiver, but is unlikely to impose a marketing ban on wireless consumers despite the fact that the industry has had half a decade to comply. I also do not expect the FCC to require the wireless industry to contact every user to let them know about the limitations of their 911 solutions or to require stickers on the handsets warning users.” …..

You can read the rest of Jeff Pulver’s comments here. I have a great deal of respect for Jeff, because unlike many of us who can do little more than point out the inequity of the FCC’s recent actions, Jeff has actually made the effort to try and change things for the better by filing his petition. It is a real shame that these days, it often seems like the FCC only hears the voices associated with the large telephone companies, and their associated astroturf groups and “sock puppets.”

I just want to say to Jeff, thank you for all your efforts. As for the FCC, I don’t think anyone understands why they act as they do sometimes. But I do recall reading a page of sayings a long time ago, and while I have long since forgotten most of them, the one I have always remembered was this one: “When you see something happening that you cannot understand, look for the financial interest.” Today, in our government-for-sale era, the truth of that saying is, unfortunately, far more evident. The problem that Jeff has, and I have, and that most of you reading this have, is that we cannot afford to give several thousand dollars to each of the “right” senators and members of congress, so that they will actually listen to us. But the big phone companies can afford to do that. And, perhaps that’s the reason that petitions like Jeff’s go nowhere at the FCC.

In a somewhat unrelated story I saw today, it seems that this favoritism shown to the wealthy and influential even extends to how hospital patients are treated. Maybe this sort of thing shouldn’t surprise us, but on the other hand, this is certainly not how were were taught that government is supposed to work, back when we took our state-mandated “civics” course in High School.

I just came across a rather incredible post on BroadbandReports.com. User “markosjal” writes:

I just went to a search engine thinking abount a particular configuration for a Linksys PAP2. I thought I should be able to easily find some Linksys PAP2 sample configuration pages, and sure enough, I clicked on the first link, and thought I was looking at a screen captured image. The page loaded from the domains main page and the Links were active.

What I was seeing was a real live linksys pap2 , with the account number clearly displayed (phone number). I thought well no harm done in looking at what I wanted to see while I was there and entered Admin and advanced configuration WITH NO PASSWORD! Now I know this person had to be a real genius!

Since I wanted to see about call forwarding, I entered my USA number into the PAP2s call forward always section, and dialed the number that I saw on the main page of the linksys PAP2 config pages. I immediately connected to my voice mail, and yes MY voice mail. So call forwarding REALLY does work on the PAP2.

I then realized what if some other person wanted to call some very expensive destination, JUST DIAL THROUGH THIS PAP2! Yes, call an Iridum Phone at several dollars per minute and pay only for a USA call! I never did this but realized quickly that it was possible. …..

Now it would seem that this is an ID-TEN-T error (read: ID10T), where someone either isn’t using any sort of firewall, or they have it configured incorrectly. But the scary part is that apparently this isn’t the only one out there. Although “markosjal” was kind enough to contact the owner of that particular PAP2 and advise them of the vulnerability (which has apparently resulted in it being taken offline), another person (“DanZ23“) writes in the same thread that “I just found a couple more wide open PAP2s thru Google. This is incredible.”

My question is, should the search engines be intelligent enough to protect such device owners from their own stupidity? I don’t think there is a user in the world that really wants their PAP2 configuration pages indexed by Google, or any other search engine. Granted that these devices should not be accessible from the wide open Internet, but on the other hand, I would think that Google could easily add some logic to filter them out in the rare instance where they are discovered. I wonder what others would think about that.

According to ConsumerAffairs.Com,

Cingular Wireless has won a patent on the concept of using “emoticons” on mobile phones. The patent applies not only to graphic versions of the ubiquitous smiley/mad face but also to simple text versions.

Cingular says the aim of the patent is to enable the displaying of graphics on its subscribers’ handsets, the patent would also prohibit sending simple text versions via a dedicated or programmable key.

Read the full story here, and realize that the U.S. Patent system is totally broken. Anyone who has not lived in a cave knows that emoticons have been in general use for at least ten or fifteen years now, and that instant messaging programs have been letting users pick out emoticons and send them for quite some time now. Exactly what about this is non-obvious, or not covered by “prior art”?

It seems the new rule on patents is, find something that everyone’s been using for years, make some obvious tweak to it, and file an overly-broad patent and hope that the patent examiners aren’t any brighter than a herd of monkeys (and there’s been little evidence recently to suggest that they are).

I think I’m going to patent the concept of loading a wheelbarrow into the back of a SUV using a ramp. With any luck, I’ll get a patent on at least the wheelbarrow and the ramp!

If you need one or more phone numbers for incoming calls in Austria, France, Ireland, Italy, and/or Spain, you could go to a major phone company and pay thousands of dollars per month for international FX lines. Or, as of today, you could go to Vonage and, after signing up for one of their monthly service plans, add virtual numbers in any of those countries for $9.99 each in U.S. dollars ($11.99 in Canadian dollars, £5.99 in the U.K.). More details can be found in their press release. Of course, Vonage has already been offering numbers in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. for some time now.

If you just want to talk to friends and family living in Western Europe or elsewhere in the world, it might be a lot cheaper to get them set up with something like Free World Dialup, Skype, or a similar free VoIP service. But if you do business in any of those countries, or perhaps have a large family over there (or your family members don’t know how to turn on a computer, let alone talk over one) then this might be one way to lower those international toll charges.

The National Journal’s Insider Update had a story back on Monday entitled, “Burns, Rockefeller Finishing Draft Of Bill To Overhaul USF.” According to the article,

….. Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., are in the late stages of drafting legislation overhauling the $7.1 billion universal service fund. ….. The bill seeks to strengthen the federal program — which is designed to lower the cost of phone service in rural and low-income areas — by expanding the program’s funding base and permitting the FCC to subsidize broadband. ….. At present, only wireline and wireless telecom companies offering interstate and international calls pay into the fund. The draft broadens the base to include intrastate carriers, such as providers of local phone service. One source said the draft gives the FCC discretion to require contributions by providers of Internet telephony, known as Voice over Internet Protocol.

Now I have often said that the Universal Service Fund (USF) is nothing more than a corporate welfare program that basically provides extra money for greedy small telephone companies. It subsidizes inefficiency and allows those companies to continue to monopolize their service areas, often gouging their customers in the process. In short I have nothing good to say about the USF. Some people have defended it on the basis that it helps schools get computers and broadband connections (another “let’s do it for the children” sham) but certainly there are better ways to fund in-school computing than this inefficient and wasteful program.

So, what would motivate someone like Senator Burns to expand such an almost universally disliked (except by those who feed at its trough) program? Well, this chart at opensecrets.org is certainly enlightening. It shows the Top 20 Recipients of contributions from PACs and individuals associated with Telephone Utilities, and look at who is ranked number 1, right up there at the top of the list, having received $69,950 so far in the 2006 election cycle! “Burns, Conrad (R-MT).”

Follow the money trail…

There is yet another story going around about how VoIP is insecure, could help hackers, etc. etc. These scare stories show up with alarming regularity although I have yet to read of any documented case where VoIP actually was used in this way. Today’s attempt to frighten everyone away from VoIP originates with a group called The Communications Research Network (CRN) which in their news release is glowingly described as follows:

The Communications Research Network (CRN) is a unique community of industry experts, academic pioneers and policy makers, dedicated to mapping and shaping the future of the communications industry. Funded by The Cambridge-MIT Institute – a joint venture between Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the CRN runs numerous working groups on key issues facing the communications industry.

Unfortunately, they omit one little detail in the above self-description that makes all the difference where their credibility is concerned. If you go to their web site and look carefully at the banner that heads most or all of their pages, in the upper right-hand corner of their banner, in a little tab, you see this:

Yes, folks, that’s BT, as in British Telecom. Of course, they would certainly have no ulterior motive in trying to scare people away from VoIP, now would they?! Right, and I have this five-mile-long bridge in Northern Michigan I can let you have for a song…

What’s really sad is that several technology news outlets picked up this story without even mentioning the support by BT, which would certain cause some readers to question the motives behind the release of the report, if not the accuracy. I’m not at all suggesting that VoIP providers should be complacent about security, but there is a line between sounding a legitimate warning, and playing to the press in such a manner as to attempt to damage the reputation of VoIP as an industry. When a report such as this comes out of an organization supported by a major telephone company, I for one wonder if that line has been crossed.

From a blog called “raving lunacy” comes this vision of the future if the baby Bells get to do what they want to do. Imagine trying to access a favorite web site and seeing this instead:

If this is not your idea of what the Internet ought to be, you might want to read the full article, entitled “Economic Censorship or Electronic Apartheid” – I am sure that a very significant percentage of web sites would just go away rather than pay off each network for access.

The difference between the thinking of the phone companies and the open Internet is illustrated very well by text messaging. The phone companies have people paying a per message charge to send tiny messages over their wireless networks, that probably cost them next to nothing to transmit (I truly doubt these short text messages add any significant amount of traffic to their networks). On the Internet, text messaging is just another application, and you can send and receive as many as you want. Do you really want the phone companies put in the position of being able to charge you for every text message or e-mail that you send or receive, or maybe a penny or two for every web page you view (unless the web site operator has given in to their extortion demands)?

You may recall my post a couple days ago about writing a post that was lost when Blogger claimed my blog didn’t exist (interestingly, that hasn’t happened since) and then Firefox crashed. One of the things I had done in that post was to compare the demands of the phone companies to the old “protection rackets” set up by gangsters, say in Chicago during the days of Al Capone. Back then, you had to pay off “the mob” to make sure your shipments didn’t fall off a truck into Lake Michigan, or get rerouted to Fairbanks by mistake. Now the phone companies want companies to pay so their packets don’t fall off the Internet, or become so delayed as to be next to useless.

And I remember making the point that back in those days, some companies would choose not to do business in Chicago rather than paying off the mob, so the people of Chicago were deprived of access to certain products that were available elsewhere in the country. Will the day come when customers of some broadband providers are deprived of the ability to access certain sites that everyone else on the Internet can access, because that site owner refused to pay the “protection money”?

See where I was going with this? If the phone companies actually make good on their threats, what is the difference between them and “the mob” when it was running protection rackets?

My previous post was probably more eloquent (or maybe just more verbose), but that was pretty much the comparison I was trying to make.

One thing that really ticks off a lot of knowledgeable VoIP users is that the Federal Communications Commission seems to want VoIP companies to do the impossible – that is, provide accurate location information on “nomadic” VoIP users. “Nomadic” users are those that don’t always use their VoIP adapter at the same location, but instead move around from one location to another.

The cell phone companies have had a couple decades to “get it right” and they still can’t do it. Even new phones that have GPS capability built in can’t always deliver accurate location information, at least not according to a story in the Muskegon Chronicle that tells how firefighters were delayed by nine minutes in responding to a house fire because at first the wrong fire department was sent to the wrong location.

Now to be fair, in this particular instance, it may not have been entirely the fault of the phone. In Muskegon County, there are many streets with similar names. In the City of Muskegon there is a street named Roberts, while in Muskegon Township, on the opposite side of the Muskegon River, there is a street called North Roberts, which would be a continuation of the Roberts street in Muskegon if there were a bridge across the river at that location, which there is not. The fire was on North Roberts but the City of Muskegon fire department was sent to Roberts Street, and when they couldn’t find a fire, it was apparently only then that the Muskegon Township fire department was dispatched.

But in this case, the person who called in the fire was calling from a cell phone, which if GPS compliant should have provided exact location information and clearly located the caller on the north side of the river. However, as the Muskegon Chronicle article explains,

When a 911 call is made from a regular telephone, the computer-aided dispatch system at Muskegon Central Dispatch automatically provides the address where the phone number is registered with the telephone company.

[Executive director of Muskegon Central Dispatch David McCastle] said that Muskegon Central Dispatch also is “Phase 2 compliant,” meaning it has the capability to locate cellular phones. “If everything is working correctly — if the GPS (Global Positioning System) and satellites are able to pick up your cell phone — it will come back with a latitude and longitude, and we should be able to get a location within 250 feet of the phone,” he said.

But the caller must have an updated cell phone that can provide GPS coordinates, he added.

In addition, there are a number of things that can interfere with the location process, he said. If someone is inside a building or standing under heavy electrical power lines, for example, the system might not work.

“Generally, to get the best performance, you have to be outside,” he said.

So my question is, why is the FCC expecting the VoIP companies to provide exact location information, given that most VoIP adapters are located inside buildings, when even cell phones can’t seem to deliver guaranteed accurate location information under those circumstances (and cell phone companies are much larger, have more resources at their disposal, and have had far longer to develop the technology)?

And people wonder why I say that sometimes it seems like the FCC is just doing the dirty work for the big incumbent phone companies!

If you are in the communications business, you really should take a few moments to read the article entitled “Would You Recommend Us?” from Business Week. The article refers to a Harvard Business Review article, which recommended that

“….. companies measure customer loyalty by asking one simple question rather than relying on lengthy satisfaction surveys: “On a scale of zero to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to your friends or colleagues?”

The article showed that “net promoter scores,” which measure the difference between the percentage of customers who give high responses (“promoters”) and those who give low ones (“detractors”), correlate closely with a company’s revenue growth. Promoters are defined as customers who give the company 9 or 10, while detractors hand out “0″ through 6. Customers who log 7 or 8 are deemed “passively satisfied” and aren’t calculated in the final score. …..”

The Business Week article goes on to suggest that this simple question is a more accurate indicator than those “customer satisfaction surveys” that some companies like to use, and that for best results, customers who give low numbers could be contacted to determine why they are less than enthusiastic.

I don’t think there’s a telephone company in the nation, at least not any that are in the top tier when it comes to number of customers, that would dare ask this question of their customers – I would bet that some customers might even give negative numbers! Some of the smaller phone companies (the ones that do not use their “local monopoly” status as an excuse to gouge their customers) might fare better. I would imagine most cable companies would get low scores. It would be really interesting to see what kind of numbers VoIP customers would give to their providers; my guess is that the most heavily advertised companies would not be the ones that get the highest scores.

I think the reason this question might yield more accurate results than surveys is that most people do not want to be bothered with answering survey questions – unless, of course, they are really upset with a company and want to make a statement, or really enthused about a company. Most people don’t fall into either of those categories, and don’t want to be bothered to take a survey – and further, I think that many customers now perceive surveys as a possible marketing ploy, designed not so much to determine what they think about a company as to determine what else the company might be able to convince them to buy.

Therefore, customers do not believe it’s in their own self interest to take a survey, and even if they agree to take it, they may just pull responses out of thin air, without really giving the questions much thought. That is why this one simple question may be far more effective – most everyone can tell you immediately whether they’d recommend a business to their friends and family. The only thing I’d add to the article is that anyone asking this question should have a space to record “volunteered comments”, because after you ask the question, some customers will say things like, “Do you want to know why I’d give them such a low rating?”, or just proceed to tell the questioner what they think, without any prompting at all. Those comments should be recorded and analyzed.

Reuters reported today that President Bush may nominate telecommunications lawyer Robert McDowell to fill the third Republican seat on the five-member Federal Communications Commission. According to the report, “McDowell serves as senior vice president and assistant general counsel at Comptel, a group representing companies that primarily compete against big telephone carriers like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications.” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens has gone on record saying that he would support the nomination, in a later Reuters article that also noted this:

One analyst said that if McDowell is nominated and confirmed, he could be sympathetic to concerns of companies that compete against the big telephone carriers on issues like intercarrier compensation and universal service, among others.

“That has to be a concern for the Bells, though we suspect Mr. McDowell would come under pressure to demonstrate some degree of even-handedness as a commissioner,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Blair Levin, said in a research note.

And Rich Tehrani puts this possible nomination in perspective:

It goes without saying that if McDowell is nominated it will be a big win for consumers in 2006 as I expect McDowell to be pro competition. Not faux competition with concepts like tiered-Internet services being thrown around in an effort by incumbent providers to hold content providers and consumers hostage.

In the worst case scenario McDowell will be outvoted repeatedly but at least will ensure the American people have a strong ally in the FCC. Comptel has been perhaps the most vocal critic of [former] FCC Chairmen Michael Powell and [current FCC Chairman] Kevin Martin and as such it may be a bit awkward to have McDowell as a commissioner at all.

Awkward perhaps, but probably exactly what is needed at this point in time to bring some balance back to the FCC. Chairman Kevin Martin seems to be carrying the water for the big incumbents, and therefore having someone in the FCC that understands the challenges faced by the competition would be a major plus right now.

In my opinion, the FCC has been going in almost entirely the wrong direction since Mr. Martin assumed leadership of that agency, so having another Republican on the Commission that presumably would not kowtow to the big phone companies would probably be one of the best things that could happen to begin to change the current direction of the FCC, and perhaps steer it away from helping “Ma Bell” re-assimilate.

One of the things that makes me so disgusted about certain large corporations is that they often exhibit a double standard, where they reserve rights for themselves that they would never grant to you. One example is late fees – if you are late paying a utility company, they want you to pay them interest on the unpaid balance. But if, for some reason, they owe YOU money, you may have to wait 60-120 days and they’ll be holding ice fishing contests in hell before you’ll ever see a dime of interest paid to YOU.

Well now comes the example of alleged hypocrisy that tops them all. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Techdirt summarizes it nicely:

MPAA’s Double Standard: It’s Allowed To Copy Movies
Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 @ 09:30AM
from the fair-use-is-okay-for-those-in-power dept.
This very well might be a publicity stunt, as the Motion Picture Association of America accuses, but even if that’s the case there are some worthwhile points in the fact that the MPAA is now being accused of making unauthorized copies of a movie. The movie in question is the documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” which has already received plenty of publicity for its look behind the scenes at the MPAA rating process. The MPAA’s response (other than calling it a publicity stunt) suggests the double standard it holds. They seem to feel that, because they’re the MPAA, different rules apply: “We made a copy of Kirby’s movie because it had implications for our employees.” Funny, but we don’t think that excuse would work for anyone sued by the MPAA for copying a movie themselves. As the article points out, the MPAA’s own website very clearly states: “Manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owners is illegal… Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple… ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences.” Also, this is the same group that was allowed to go into schools and tell children “if you haven’t paid for it, you’ve stolen it.” What about fair use? Well, Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA for many years, used to famously say that fair use does not exist. Apparently, he meant for other people.

Go see the original article on the Techdirt web site to read the responses (or to leave a response, should you feel so motivated). Some are entirely predictable but others yield some additional insight. I found this one particularly thought-provoking – it comes from someone identified only as “gbc”, who wrote,

Maybe it’s just paranoid me, but couldn’t the MPAA want a court fight over this? Wouldn’t it strengthen precedent for their other legal activities if they claimed ‘fair use’ and LOST this case? I mean how hard would it be for them to lose this one? And how much would it really cost them?

I think it might be possible the best case scenario for consumers is if the MPAA goes to court over this and WINS!

And when you think about it, wouldn’t you love to see this dispute wind up in court? If the MPAA wins, then the right of fair use is strengthened for all of us. But if they were to lose, then they could be called out as hypocrites, and no better than those they accuse!

This article was posted on Techdirt:

Call in the Mythbusters. If they can show that mobile phones don’t cause fueling stations to explode, perhaps they can show that it won’t turn off hospital equipment either. For years, people have questioned whether or not mobile phones really interfered with hospital equipment — and even doctors have been clamoring to be allowed to use mobile phones. Plenty of folks who understand wireless technologies have noted that the chance of interference is ridiculously low, but old habits die hard. However, it looks like a few hospitals are finally updating their thinking. Textually points out that a hospital in Singapore is now allowing staff to carry mobile phones after tests showed that mobile phones have no impact on medical equipment. Of course, while this probably won’t surprise too many people, the real question should be “what took so long?”

I have always suspected that the real reason some medical facilities don’t like people using cell phones is because some of them make a tidy little profit off of the pay phones they have scattered throughout the facility, and also the cut they get from long distance calls charged to patient rooms (around here, at least, local calls from patient rooms are free, though I suppose that’s not true everywhere).

I’ve also noticed recently that more and more, people are starting to ignore the ban. That may also be a local phenomenon, but I have even seen doctors and nurses using cell phones within the hospital buildings, as well as patients talking on cell phones in waiting areas. In the latter case they tend to keep their conversations rather short, probably hoping they can end the call before someone comes and tells them to take it outside, though I’ve never actually seen anyone do that.

I’ll also just bet that a lot of cell phone calls get made from bathrooms in patient rooms, and elsewhere in the hospitals. You might be able to make people turn a cell phone off when they enter a building, but you can’t really stop them from turning it back on once they are past the entrance, unless you follow them around. Even been stuck in one of those little rooms in a medical facility waiting for the doctor to drop in? Ever taken or placed a phone call while stuck in there? Be honest, now!

So I suspect that if hospitals don’t end these cell phone bans on their own, or at least make them more reasonable (at the very least, there is NO good reason to enforce a ban in many patient waiting areas, which are far removed from any medical equipment), this will become one of those “rules” that’s widely ignored, especially if word gets out that there’s really no good reason for such bans.

Okay, the truth is that I usually like both Blogger and Firefox, but a couple of times in the past week I have apparently been bit hard by a “perfect storm” of bugs.

The major problem is that sometimes, when I try to post to Blogger, it tells me that my blog does not exist. This is something that others have run into, but it apparently isn’t a real common problem. Anyway, there have been times when I have been able to back up a page and publish again and then it would work, but not always.

Tonight I’d spent nearly an hour on a post, and got the “blog does not exist” message, and when I checked the “back” button, Firefox crashed. Every tab I had open, everything I had written, all went “poof” just that quickly. I’m seriously considering removing the Firefox button from my blog. The same thing happened to me a few days ago, but that wasn’t as lengthy a post.

There is one thing I simply will not do, and that is to rewrite a large body of text that the computer has eaten. My brain doesn’t work that way – I may have come up with something good the first time around, but when it’s gone, it’s gone, and I can’t just re-create it. I will say that I was going to point you to David S. Isenberg’s blog article entitled “Internet: Freedom or Privilege?” and highly recommend that you read it, especially if you don’t quite yet understand what all the fuss is about with regard to network neutrality. But I had some additional comments that are now gone, perhaps forever, or perhaps until the next time I’m inspired to write on the subject.

I don’t blame Firefox as much as I blame Blogger. It could be Firefox, or a Firefox extension that’s causing the crash, but it would not even be a problem if Blogger didn’t falsely claim that my blog doesn’t exist from time to time. I’m guessing that Blogger isn’t a real high priority for Google and that’s why this problem hasn’t been fixed, but it’s getting REALLY irritating. Pardon me for venting, but if you’ve ever had an urge to throw a brick at your computer after it ate your text, you know how I feel right about now.

Jeff Pulver thinks it’s a definite possibility. He writes:

One theory I have been mulling over goes as follows: What if the Bells simply slipped in ever-so-quietly, under cover of night, tariff filings with the Federal Communications Commission to make the “two-tiered” Internet a reality? I suspect that the tariffs would essentially allow for grades of service for Internet access with packet-prioritization, with varying QoS and service management. The unaffiliated Internet application and content providers might be left riding the breakdown lane before they realize it.

Read Jeff’s complete blog post here.

The phone companies have been quite successful in sneaking things favorable to them, and unfavorable to almost everyone else, into tariff filings and even into new legislation. Here in Michigan they managed to get some language added to the new Michigan Telecommunications Act revision, that could eliminate what are called “Virtual NXX’s” – without getting too technical, that means a lot of people served by rural phone companies could lose local dialup Internet access. It all depends on how the Michigan Public Service Commission, and perhaps ultimately a court, interprets that section of the law.

So, I think Jeff’s concerns are quite valid. I hope that those who keep watch of the FCC will be vigilant enough to notice if this happens, and to challenge any major changes that the phone companies may try to sneak in via the tariff route.

From consumeraffairs.com comes this report:

Identifying such abuse as “privacy theft,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has sued a Florida company that for roughly $100 and a cell phone number will use allegedly illegal means to access an individual’s cell phone or land line records. …..

Bet that this will not be the only state to file a lawsuit. And in Michigan, it looks like there’s a high probability that there will will be legislation on this issue – the other day Governor Granholm called upon the Michigan Legislature to enact new criminal laws prohibiting the unauthorized sale or release of telephone records and other personal information by telecommunications service providers and information brokers.

The cynical side of me wonders if the reason this issue is getting so much play is because even the legislators and government officials are not immune from the damage that can be done when someone’s privacy is invaded in this way. I would guess that there are many politicians that could be quite embarrassed (or worse) if their calling records were revealed. With elections coming up, you just know that if this isn’t quickly nipped in the bud, each political party and politician will be analyzing the calling records of their opponents, to see what sort of dirt they can dig up. When something can bite a politician in the butt, they are usually fairly enthusiastic about passing a law to make it illegal.

Compare to their relatively slow response to identity theft, when can ruin the lives of ordinary people but which rarely impacts politicians (after all, if it were a Senator’s identity that was stolen, I’ll bet the word would quickly go out to call the FBI immediately if anyone tries to open an account in their name). When it only affects the rest of us, Congress and state legislatures can sometimes move at glacial speed. When it affects them personally, somehow it becomes a front burner issue!

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette is carrying a story by David Radin, in which he explains how his Verizon VoiceWing VoIP service was temporarily suspended because his VoIP adapter was, for whatever reason, unable to connect to the Internet for a period of less than two hours. Because of that outage, Verizon’s system assumes that he might have changed location, which could make his e911 information incorrect, so it disconnected his service (including his ability to make 911 calls) until he went onto the Internet and in some way verified his current location.

There’s a lot of things wrong with doing it this way, not the least of which is the possibility that in a real emergency, the service would be suspended and the customer would be unable to access any emergency services. Only a phone company would design their VoIP service using the apparent assumption that short connectivity losses are an unusual event.

If you visited this blog earlier this evening, you may have already noticed the photo attached to the previous blog entry. I read somewhere that a blog is more interesting if an occasional photo or graphic is included, so I thought I’d give it a try. So, did it really make the blog any more interesting?

I found a source of free stock photos at Stock.XCHNG. You can read their image license agreement for the details, but basically it looks like it’s okay to use their images on a web site, so I’m assuming that use in a non-commercial blog is okay also.

To me this seems better than Flickr, because at Flickr you are never sure whether an image is free to use until you actually click on the thumbnail and read the conditions that the original photographer has placed on the photo. At Stock.XCHNG, it appears that most or all of the photos are by definition available for use. But, I haven’t really explored the site fully, so there may be conditions on some photos that I’m not aware of.

I just thought some of you might like to know about this resource. I found a link to it in a free online book called The Big Book of Web Design Freebies, which as the title implies, contains links to many sites that offer free stuff that may be useful to web site designers.

Please note that I just found the resources today, so I’ve not used them for any length of time. I just figured if anyone reading this was looking for something along these lines, you could visit the sites and see if you think they are useful.