Archive for January, 2008

Cato Institute hypocrites?

January 30, 2008 at 11:31 pm · Filed under Internet, Legislation, Regulation, consumer ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

If you happen to have been a subscriber to the old MI-Telecom mailing list (now defunct), you know that I am not much impressed by libertarian “think tanks.”  It’s not that I’m against libertarian principles, per se, it’s just that I can’t get over the nagging suspicion that certain of these think tanks are far too willing to issue opinions that may be helpful to certain corporate benefactors, while trying to appear pro-consumer. As for the Cato Institute specifically, in the past they have taken positions that I would consider anti-consumer, such as opposing structural separation in the telecommunications industry, and opposing greater oversight of the baby Bells. Organizations such as these are often able to sway legislators’ votes on critical issues.

If you go to the Cato Institute’s “About” page, you find that they say these things about themselves:

“The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets and peace.” [Emphasis added]

Note that they at least give lip service to “individual liberty.” And further down on the page…

“The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato’s work has increasingly come to be called “libertarianism” or “market liberalism.” It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism.” [Emphasis added]

Note again that they appear to value individual civil liberties as a core principle.  One might tend to assume that such liberty would include freedom of speech and freedom to express one’s opinions, even if one is in some way associated with the Institute, provided of course that that the person expressing such opinions is doing it on their own time and not directly contradicting one of the Institute’s published opinions or core values.

That’s why I found the following obscure item a bit astonishing. To try to summarize, economist and commentator Dom Armentano was employed by the Cato Institute as an “adjunct scholar.” Mr. Armentano also happens to have some side interests that are in no way connected to his work at the institute, one of which is the possibility of extraterrestrial life.  Please bear in mind that nowadays, especially with the advent of the Internet, there is a lot of information out there about extraterrestrial life and UFO’s, and indeed, television programs on these topics are staples for certain cable networks.  The most popular late-night radio talk show in the country, Coast-to-Coast AM, frequently deals with the topic of possible extraterrestrial life. It seems that only the major U.S. news media has an aversion to the subject, for reasons I understand but won’t go into in this short summary. Suffice it to say that according to various surveys, there are probably more Americans that believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life (certainly a clear majority of Americans) than there are believers in just about any individual religious sect or denomination.

Anyway, on his own time,  Mr. Armentano wrote a column for a local newspaper in Florida, entitled “Intelligent extraterrestrial life: The other inconvenient truth?” It seems that Mr. Armentano is a fairly prolific writer, and has written for many publications both online and offline, both about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and about many other topics. But it was the column mentioned above that apparently caused his bosses at the Cato Institute to flip out, and to relieve him of his position with the Institute, according to this article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Now, why is this relevant to this blog?  Because the Cato Institute feels that part of their mission is to inject their opinions into matters of Telecom, Internet and Information Policy, and they would like you to believe that “The Cato Institute’s research on telecommunications and information policy advances the Institute’s vision of free minds and free markets within the information policy, information technology, and telecommunications sectors of the American economy” (that’s a direct quote from their web site, with emphasis again added). But while they try to sell this stuff to you and I and our legislators, if the Herald-Tribune article is to be taken at face value, apparently the Institute’s support of “free minds” and “individual liberty” does not extend to their own employees.

When an organization advocates one set of values and then behaves in a manner opposite those values, that is one definition of hypocrisy, and that brings us to the matter of whether we should pay attention to what such organizations have to say.  If they can’t “eat their own dog food”, why should the rest of us (and particularly our legislators) give any heed to their opinions? It is high time our legislators begin to represent “we the people”, and not organizations with their own agendas that pretend to represent the public interest, but apparently can’t even adhere to their own core values.

Of course, all of the above is simply my opinion.  Feel free to leave a comment if you disagree.

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The Consumerist has trifecta of Comcast items today

January 30, 2008 at 1:09 pm · Filed under Regulation, Telephone, cable, consumer, customer service ·Tagged , , , , ,

I don’t know if someone decided to put Comcast in the spotlight today over at The Consumerist, or if all the Comcast-related items just happened to pour in today, but there are three items that may be of interest to Comcast customers (the last item may apply to you even if you’re not a Comcast customer):

First, there’s now an easy way for customers to opt out of mandatory binding arbitration as a way to settle disputes with Comcast (along with a link to an article that shows why you might want to do that). If you’re already convinced and want to cut to the chase, here’s a link to the opt-out form on Comcast’s site.

Second, The Consumerist also reports that Comcast has been fined $12,000 for having crappy customer service by Montgomery County, Maryland. The quote we like comes from county Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg: “Fining companies that fail to fulfill their contractual obligations is an important part of good government.” We sometimes wish that certain other government officials felt that way (and we don’t mean that only where Comcast is concerned – there are a lot of other companies out there giving crappy service, and/or charging higher-than-advertised prices through the use of bogus add-on fees, and/or engaging in other practices that should elicit fines).

Third, and this may be the most important, The Consumerist advises that a Comcast insider warns that Comcast doesn’t check to see if 911 is working on your Comcast digital phone – and this article concludes by implying that this may be a problem with other companies as well. As much as a few 911 center operators may hate the idea (most don’t, but there are a few that seem to forget what their role actually is), we think that any time you change phone service providers, it’s a good idea to make a test call to 911 during daytime hours, when there’s not likely to be much real emergency traffic (not in the middle of a major storm, in other words). Some people (including some who have left comments on the article) advise that before doing this, you call the 911 center on their non-emergency number and ask if it’s okay to make such a test call. Note that in a few jurisdictions it may actually be illegal to make such a test call, and/or the 911 folks may yell at you for tying up their lines (particularly if you don’t use common sense about calling when they aren’t busy), so that’s another reason to call the non-emergency number first, if you can find it (this is probably particularly true if you live in a metropolitan area).

When making a test 911 call, the first thing you should say is that there is no emergency, and that you are testing your (new) phone service to see if 911 calls are being completed properly.  Then ask if the call has actually gone to the 911 center that serves your address, and also whether their caller ID display is showing correct information (your name and street address). Some 911 centers (probably all of them) have a way to add notes associated with an address, for example, if there is an invalid living in your home or some other special situation that you think first responders may need to know, and you may want to find out if any such notes are still attached to the account (if you need to add such notes, there may be a page or a form in your local telephone directory that explains how to do that, but you should probably call the center’s non-emergency number to discuss that). And don’t forget, once you start a 911 call, do not just hang up if an interruption occurs – in most jurisdictions they are required to send the police out if you hang up on a 911 call without saying anything, under the theory that you may be ill, or you may be in an emergency situation (home invasion, etc.) where you cannot speak. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the police will actually arrive soon enough to help in a real emergency if you just hang up without speaking, but Murphy’s Law says that if you don’t need them and hang up, that’s when they will be knocking at your door.

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Call Centers: Good News and More Good News

January 30, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under Telephone, consumer, customer service ·Tagged , , , ,

The Detroit Free Press is running an interesting article entitled “Busier signals at call centers” – it’s in the business section, and near the top of the article they make this observation:

As wildly popular as the Do Not Call List has been with consumers, it’s among the things that have been rough on telemarketers, who have seen more than a million jobs disappear nationwide, 137,000 in Michigan.

Gee, let’s all take a moment to shed a tear for the telemarketers who are unable to ply their trade. Okay, that’s long enough.  The bright side is that they will now probably be able to have an uninterrupted dinnertime with their families, just like the rest of us who have signed up for the do-not-call list.  I have been criticized in the past for not showing empathy for telemarketers who have lost their jobs, but c’mon – it’s a crap job to begin with, and all they do is annoy a large number of people in order to make a profit for some company that couldn’t care less about them.  I guess I should also feel empathy for drug dealers who have been arrested and can no longer support their families by plying their trade. Give me a break. But, as it turns out, there is some good news for these folks…

Telemarketing jobs may be in for a rebound. While the outbound, or sales call, portion of the industry has deflated, the inbound, or customer service call centers, are growing, Jonathan Means, senior vice president for Kelly Services Inc. in Troy, the global staffing company, said Tuesday. ….. “Contact center business is coming back to the United States,” Means said. “There was a trend of outsourcing those calls to India, and you know the horror stories. Companies have discovered that there is lost business when people have a bad call experience.”

It turns out that’s it’s all a matter of who initiates the call.  We hate the telemarketer that calls us during dinnertime, but if we are calling a customer service rep, we tend to prefer speaking to someone who knows our language and understands our culture.  When call centers are outsourced to other countries, the folks there often do not understand American expectations for customer service, and then when the American caller gets frustrated with the call center employee for not providing the expected level of service and raises their voice, the call center employee often tends to take it much more personally than an American would.  Americans, at least, usually understand each other – we have certain cultural norms and expectations that are difficult for people in other countries to understand, and we don’t like talking to someone (particularly on the telephone) that has such a thick accent that we have difficulty understanding them.

Seriously, I hope that all the Americans who are working in telemarketing can get jobs as inbound call center reps – that’s a win-win situation! Fewer people out there to annoy us, and more people to take our calls when we really want to talk to them.

Of course, there may be one downside – if anything like karma actually exists, once they start taking inbound calls, the former telemarketers will be the ones who get the rudest and most annoying callers. And if they have to work through the dinner hour, the bulk of the calls will come right when they are trying to grab a few bites out of a sandwich or a snack!

(By the way – I realize that employees from call centers in other parts of the world just might stumble across this blog, so I will just say this much – I understand that you folks need jobs, too. But if you want to service the rest of the English-speaking world, you need to do these things:  First, take elocution lessons, or speech lessons or whatever they call it in your part of the world,  so you can learn to talk with an accent similar to that of the majority of your callers.  Second, try to appear enthusiastic about solving the customer’s problem – the laid back, “I don’t care, it’s just a job” attitude really offends callers.  When we tell you that something went wrong, we want you to be as concerned about getting it right as we are, or at least to try to appear that way.  Third, actually solve the problem – if you can’t, immediately pass the call on to someone who can – don’t waste the customer’s time. If you can’t do that, even if it’s because of your employer’s policies, you’d best be seeking other employment. Fourth, understand that if a caller raises the volume of their voice, that is usually an indication that they feel you are not solving their problem, or are delaying them unnecessarily.  It does not mean that you are a bad person, but it does mean you need to re-evaluate your approach to helping that customer, or maybe it just means you need to shut up and listen to what the customer is telling you. If you tend to internalize it when a caller raises their voice, or even occasionally uses profanity, then you need to be in another line of work!)

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Muskegon Chronicle: Comcast apologizes for local access changes

January 30, 2008 at 4:58 am · Filed under Regulation, cable ·Tagged , ,

I have a sneaking suspicion that Comcast tried to operate under the theory that it’s easier to seek forgiveness after the fact than to ask permission beforehand… anyway, in reading this article I see no guarantees that they won’t move these channels eventually.  More likely, in my opinion, they will try to convince local government officials that this move is really a good and/or necessary change.

WASHINGTON — Comcast Corp. apologized today for the way it handled a proposed shift of community access programming in Michigan that would force customers to get converter boxes or new TVs to continue to watch local government meetings and high school football games.

Full story here:
Comcast apologizes for local access changes – Muskegon Chronicle – MLive.com

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Computerworld: Opinion: Keeping a lid on broadband

January 28, 2008 at 4:00 pm · Filed under Broadband, Regulation, Telephone ·Tagged , , , ,

Computerworld correspondent Robert L. Mitchell has come out with a scathing critique of communications deregulation in the United States:

Will you get the bandwidth you need? If your business is in Europe or Asia, the answer is yes. The average advertised bandwidth in Japan is just under 1Gbit/sec. In Korea and France, it’s over 40Mbit/sec. That sort of capacity will drive innovations that U.S. businesses can’t even envision yet.

But in the U.S., except in a few metro areas, most people are lucky if they can get 6Mbit/sec. — and in rural areas, most users can’t even get that.

It’s a disgrace born of political failure. In 1996, the government agreed to free the Baby Bells to compete in the long-distance market if they met certain conditions. Among other things, the Bells promised to share their facilities with other providers and pledged to run fiber to every home. “Almost every one of them reneged on their promises,” says David Passmore, an analyst at Burton Group.

Full story here:
Opinion: Keeping a lid on broadband

I am in agreement with most of the article, but here is where I think Mr. Mitchell jumps the shark:

Furthermore, all ISPs should be required to contribute to the Universal Service Fund just as land-line carriers do. Unless those subsidies are replenished, high-speed Internet access will never be fully extended to the 20% of businesses and homes in rural areas left behind by the market.

Mr. Mitchell, you couldn’t be more wrong on that point.  The USF is a government handout to telecommunications companies, many of which are large, multi-state, old-fashioned wireline companies. It is a form of reverse socialism that takes from all ratepayers to subsidize inefficiently operated telephone companies. Some of these companies would be quite profitable (and some already are), with or without subsidies, if they were operated in an efficient manner. There was a big flap a while back where USF funds were being used to buy thousands of dollars worth of outdated computer equipment for school systems, much of which was warehoused and never used by students. The USF is just wrong on so many levels, and almost everyone who understands anything about it would like to see it gone (except for those who receive the funds, and the organizations that shill on their behalf), but it stays because it has the backing of powerful congresscritters like Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who of course receives campaign contributions from telecom companies, and organizations representing the phone companies that feed at the USF trough.

Perhaps what Mr. Mitchell intended to say was that we need to subsidize deployment of broadband in the rural areas. I would not have as much of a problem with that if the people owned what the people are forced to pay for.  You can make an analogy to a city street – we pay taxes to create it and for its upkeep, but it then belongs to the city, which in theory is representative of all residents of the city.  The USF is a hidden “tax” of sorts, but instead of going to a unit of government to build telecommunications facilities that we can all use, it goes to private corporations.  I do realize that there are some pointy-headed think-tank types that advocate the position that everything should be privatized, but I don’t buy it anymore.

Big corporations just take and take and take some more, then charge you extra for talking to a live customer service representative.  If you have a gripe with the city – if the road in front of your home is full of potholes, for example – you can go to a city council meeting and complain, and if enough of your neighbors do the same, chances are that the city officials will feel obligated to do something.  If your broadband service sucks, or if you can’t get it at all, you wind up complaining to a faceless corporation that would just as soon you just shut up and pay the bill (if you don’t currently have service, that bill might be several thousand dollars to extend service to your home, regardless of any subsidies they may have already received).

In any case, if we are going to have broadband subsidies, and our government is hell-bent on taking from the poor (the customers) and giving to the rich corporations, at least please find a new way to do it, and don’t rely on the broken and ridiculous USF model.   Instead, tie funds to performance – before taking any money from the fund, you must make a commitment to serving new areas that don’t presently have service, and by that I mean you actually submit maps (or maybe a list of municipalities that you intend to serve in totality) showing the areas to be served, along with a firm completion date.  Miss the date and you are fined for each day that customers are unable to obtain service beyond the deadline (and you must publish that deadline in a notice in local papers, so customers and local officials in the area know about the deadline). Miss the deadline by more than six months and criminal penalties kick in.  This isn’t China, so we don’t take telecom executives out and shoot them, but when they take ratepayer money under false pretenses and then don’t deliver what they promised, there ought to be severe penalties, and I don’t just mean that they lose their Christmas bonus.

Other than that one paragraph, Mr. Mitchell couldn’t be more correct in his assessment of the situation.  The reason we are having problems in the United States is because we have given large corporations free rein, allowing them to take money under false pretenses, lie to regulators and government officials, and then when they don’t deliver on their promises we do nothing at all about it. We have government officials listening to industry-funded experts who assure them that all will be well if the communications companies can just raise their rates and get more subsidies, and by the way, that municipalities and other public entities should never be allowed to compete with them.  So these corporations just take and take and take some more, and are never called on the carpet to explain why they haven’t delivered on their previous broken promises.

It is sometimes said that to do what you’ve always done, and yet expect different results than what you’ve always achieved, is a sign of lunacy.  If so, our government officials much be a bunch of lunatics, because they keep allowing the phone companies to do what they’ve always done, and yet somehow expect that the phone and cable companies are going to get this sudden urge to make our broadband offerings comparable with those in other parts of the world. I predict that the more money that companies receive from the Universal Service Fund, the less likely we are to be the world leader in broadband service ten years from now.

(By the way, I do recognize that there are a few, very small telephone companies that probably could not exist without the USF.  The problem is that these few small deserving companies have to share the pot with large multi-state companies that make boatloads of money from they other operations, such as their cellular service.  USF disbursement should only go to companies that genuinely need them to survive, even though they are doing all they can to tighten their belts and operate efficiently, and even then the customers of such companies might sometimes be better served if the company sold their operations to another, more efficiently-operated company.  I’ve seen small companies that give their customers a lot even while charging very low rate, and then other companies that seem intent on gouging their customers for every penny they can get, and if it were up to me, those in the latter category wouldn’t get a dime from the USF).

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The NEW way phone companies gouge customers – SMS charges

January 23, 2008 at 12:15 pm · Filed under Wireless, consumer ·Tagged , , ,

Engadget notes:

If you’ve been paying attention to mobile carriers’ SMS pricing lately (and something tells us you haven’t) you’d be surprised to discover a fairly disturbing trend amongst providers: price hikes. ….. What’s most insidious about the inflated costs is the fact that SMS data is particularly low-bandwidth, and analysts say that the price increases aren’t related to higher operating costs — these companies are simply gouging customers for a service which they have embraced.

See the full story here:
Cell phone bill on the rise? Check your SMS charges – Engadget

It has always struck me as odd, and somewhat repugnant, that there should be any charge at all for these short messages – as Engadget notes, they use next to zero bandwidth compared with the bandwidth taken up by voice traffic.  You wouldn’t pay a per-message charge to use instant messaging on your computer, yet some folks will pay these ridiculous charges on their cell phones. What’s even more insidious about this is that a primary group of users is kids (teenagers), who send messages to each other simply for social purposes – which means that if a parent cuts their kids off from using the service, it could potentially have a somewhat negative social impact.  In such cases the cost causer (the teenager) is often not the one who pays the bills – it’s the parents (of course this is not always the case, but it probably happens in enough families that the phone companies make a tidy profit).  I have to wonder how willing the kids are to text with wild abandon, when the charges are coming out of the money they have earned at a summer job?

A decade ago, the phone companies gouged us on long distance charges – now that those are going the way of the dodo, I guess they feel they have to gouge us however they can, while they can.  Because of course, as wireless broadband becomes more ubiquitous (giving customers access to services like AIM, ICQ, GTalk, etc.), the need for the phone company’s SMS service will all but disappear – and none too soon, in my opinion!

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I want to move to Madison, Wisconsin

January 22, 2008 at 6:45 pm · Filed under AT&T, Broadband, DSL, Telephone, VoIP ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Well, maybe not really… in some ways Wisconsin is a strange state  – I will never forget driving through Wisconsin several years ago and seeing dead deer lying alongside the freeway, which had been spray-painted with bright fluorescent orange paint- yes, you read that right, they spray-painted the dead deer, and we saw quite a few of them that had been marked in such a manner.  I somehow doubt it was rural gangs marking their turf, so I don’t understand who was spray-painting the deer, or why – very strange!

But still, I have to compare the announcement that AT&T made today…

Detroit is the first area in the nation where AT&T U-verse Voice is available. AT&T U-verse Voice is a digital voice service delivered over the AT&T U-verse Internet Protocol network. The company began a controlled launch in late December and has since expanded the service’s availability. The service will continue to expand to more local customers and additional markets in 2008.

…..

U-verse TV customers can choose from two flexible U-verse Voice calling plans:

  • U-verse Voice Unlimited, which includes unlimited local and nationwide minutes to any location in the U.S., Canada or U.S. territories for $40 a month.
  • U-verse Voice 1000, which includes 1,000 Call Anywhere minutes to any location in the U.S. or U.S. territories for $30 a month.

(The above excerpted from: AT&T U-verse Voice Launches in Detroit – VoIP Monitor)

… to this announcement made by TDS Telecom:

Today, TDS turns on the WiMAX signal in Madison, Wis.  TDS is the first communications provider in Wisconsin to offer true WiMAX — a revolutionary, wireless high-speed Internet and phone service. The new WiMAX technology will provide digital phone and broadband service to nearly 65,000 customers in the Madison area during the first stages of the product rollout.

…..

Depending on the service a customer selects, TDS will be delivering up to 6Mb Internet speeds in combination with the fastest upload speed available. “TDS WiMAX is the fastest upload speed currently available for consumers at 6Mb / 3Mb in Madison,” adds Cvengros. Business customers will have access to near symmetric download and upload speeds.

(The above is from a TDS Telecom press release – note that it’s in .doc file format)

And BroadbandReports.com fills in some specifics about the TDS offering:

….. TDS is offering three residential tiers: 2Mbps/1Mbps for $45, 4Mbps/2Mbps for $50, and 6Mbps/3Mbps for $55.

…..

Customers can add VoIP service with 30 minutes of long distance per month and unlimited local calls for another $5. VoIP with 300 minutes of long distance is another $10 on top of the price of just Internet, and VoIP with unlimited long distance is another $15 on top of the price of Internet.

Now let’s see…  AT&T is charging $40 per month for their VoIP (excuse me, digital voice service) and that’s only if you bundle with another AT&T service – BroadbandReports.com notes that…

While the company keeps talking about how lame forced bundling is, the press release notes that U-Verse Voice is available only with purchase of AT&T U-verse TV service or AT&T Yahoo! broadband (depending on the market). The new U-Verse Voice website lists the two packages as $5 more expensive than listed above, due to the various fine print bundling discounts — which are broken down in more detail here.

I guess it depends on your needs, but note that under the TDS plan you can get 6Mbps/3Mbps broadband plus VoIP with unlimited long distance for $70 per month.  I’m not sure what AT&T Yahoo! broadband costs these days (nor what kind of speed you get), but I’d be willing to bet that an equivalent bundle from AT&T would be significantly more expensive.

What strikes me as stupid about AT&T’s pricing is that VoIP is a competitive service.  If I lived in Madison, there would (in most cases) be no good reason I should go to an independent VoIP provider for my phone service, assuming of course that the TDS service is reliable (it should be – TDS is, after all, a telephone company).  I’d be hard pressed to find reliable unlimited VoIP service from an independent provider for 15 bucks a month. It seems to me that TDS has read the tea leaves correctly, and realizes that from now on the money will be made from offering broadband service, but that voice is now a commodity.

Whereas, AT&T just can’t seem to stop themselves from thinking like an old dinosaur of a phone company.  In today’s environment, $40 is an absolutely ridiculous price to charge for an unlimited VoIP (or “digital voice” or whatever you want to call it) offering, considering that people can buy it from an independent provider for half that price and probably get more features, plus they’ll be able to have a number in whichever ratecenter they want (out of a large selection), instead of being bound by the imaginary and generally arbitrary geographic lines drawn by the telephone company.

(No, I don’t know if TDS would allow their Madison customers to have, for example, a Milwaukee telephone number.  If not, that might be a valid reason for some customers to obtain service from another provider.)

I do have one question about the TDS offering, however.  The ILEC (wireline telephone company) in Madison is AT&T, so TDS is a competitor there.  However, TDS is the ILEC in a number of rural areas in both Wisconsin and Michigan (and in many other states).  I wonder if they have any plans to offer WiMAX in their own areas – on the one hand, it would make a great deal of sense to do so, since it would dramatically cut the cost of their “outside plant”, but on the other hand, making that move would probably cut into their federal subsidies from the much-hated (except by those who feed at that trough) Universal Service Fund. I hope that if the Madison system proves viable, TDS will do the right thing and deploy the system throughout both its own footprint, and in the areas where it is a CLEC (and those areas combined would include a large portion of lower Michigan).

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SIP to Skype Calls

January 21, 2008 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Asterisk, Telephone, VoIP ·Tagged , ,

Some people seem to have this burning desire to connect sip calls through to Skype users.  I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just give them a native SIP/IAX client such as Zoiper Free, but for those who feel they can only have one voice communications client running on their desktop, and that client has to be Skype, then head on over to Tom Keating’s VoIP & Gadgets Blog:

Ok, so Skype, Inc. won’t let you dial into your Skype username using a SIP URI. Yeah, Skype claims their proprietary protocol is better than SIP. I’ve written about one SIP-to-Skype workaround, but still I hear the cries of VoIP fans everywhere clamoring for SIP access to Skype. So what’s a SIP-lovin’ VoIPster to do? Well, head on over to Scopezoom and check out the step-by-step guide that lets you deliver SIP calls directly to Skype. Essentially you can have a SIP DID number ring your Skype client. The workaround uses Net2Max.com’s One Click Contact number (1CC number) to make this possible.

Read the rest here: SIP to Skype Calls

Mr. Keating does mention that once you have this set up, you can then use PontiVoce, which “lets you turn your PC into a Skype gateway, allowing you to dial into your PC running Skype and then initiate an outbound call at SkypeOut rates.” So I guess that might be useful to some folks.

I could get a lot more excited about Skype if their protocol was open, and people could develop codecs that would allow (for example) Asterisk to interface with Skype without a bunch of hacks. In the alternative, I wish that Asterisk would start including a wide-bandwidth codec (something that would go out to 8,000 Hz at a minimum) for intra-Asterisk calls – obviously this couldn’t be used for calls to the PSTN, but it would be great if VoIP users had the option to use a wider bandwidth, instead of being limited to the (approximately) 3,000 Hz bandwidth that’s been the standard in the telephone industry since the days of vacuum tube amplification.

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Talk about AT&T’s internet filtering plans is not an acceptable topic on AT&T-sponsored talk show

January 21, 2008 at 1:03 pm · Filed under AT&T, Broadband, DSL ·Tagged , , , ,

They stopped the taping when the audience indicated they were not in favor of AT&T’s filtering plans! The story is here:

Talking About AT&T’s Internet Filtering on AT&T’s The Hugh Thompson Show

And here’s the YouTube-posted video:

I found this via a news item on BroadbandReports.com.

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The new “Generation Gap”: How we communicate

January 20, 2008 at 8:35 pm · Filed under Blog, Telephone ·Tagged , , , ,

Garrett Smith believes that the phone call is dead, or nearly so.  Here’s an excerpt from his blog post:

…..The phone call is dying because today’s youth no longer value the ideal that the phone call holds. That is the recipient of the call no longer thinks, “Wow, that was mighty nice of them to pick-up phone and call.”

I am fortunate in that I have friends, family members and business associates from a broad range of ages, backgrounds and who have a diverse communication preferences. Every week, I communicate with 75 year olds and 15 year olds a like. I believe there is a succinct dividing line between those who still value the phone call, those who still prefer to make a phone call and those who do not see the value in a phone call and would prefer to keep all of their communications electronic and textual. I believe that this “dividing line” is those who are currently the age of 26.

If you are 26 or older, you “missed” the MySpace, Facebook, social networking craze while you were in high school and college. You have a cellphone, of course, but unless you use it for business, you still don’t get your emails on it, send SMS messages like they are going out-of-style and only use 1/10th of the phones functionality (it is a phone you makes calls on it!). Few in these age brackets, browse the web like they once watched television. Most do not understand the idea of “dis-connecting” because, well, they were never really connected in the first place. Sure there are technophiles out there who will tell me I am wrong, but when you look at the average person, the mass market type, you will see that there communications preferences remain old school.

Read the complete post here.

I notice this even among people in my own family and circle of friends.  The older folks may have an answering machine, but if they are home they are likely to pick up the phone when it rings.  Anyone under about 40 (and older among folks who might be classified as technology “early adopters”, by which I mean the folks who had personal computers even before most folks had heard of the Internet) is more likely to let an answering machine or voicemail pick up, and return the call at their convenience, which often results in communications by voicemail tag, in short snippets.  These same folks may use instant messaging, but don’t live and breathe it – I’ll get IM’s like “Is now a convenient time to call?” from someone who wants a phone chat.

Then there is the generation behind mine.  Calling them is a real crap shoot.  Even if they are home and otherwise unoccupied, they seem to see the telephone as an intrusion into their lives.  Usually if I call one of them, I pretty much know that I’m going to have to leave a message on their machine or in their voicemail.  I think that telemarketers are the biggest reason for them holding that view – once you start to believe that most calls are from people wanting to bother you or sell you something, a telephone call no longer holds much value, but instead actually becomes an intrusion into your life.  I would bet there is a correlation between the rise in popularity of unlisted numbers (and the use of cell phones, which effectively give you an unlisted number) and the public perception of a telephone call as an annoyance.  This is one reason I believe that telemarketers are among the most contemptible scum that ever walked the face of the earth, and if I believed in the Dante’s Inferno version of Hell (which I don’t), I would believe that one of the lowest levels would be reserved for telemarketers and similar scum, that have turned the telephone away from being an instrument that brought people together to an instrument that is often seen as an intrusion into our lives.

I don’t use text messaging at all, other than computer-based instant messaging.  I prefer to talk to people directly – it’s much easier and more efficient, and also there’s less chance that my words will be misinterpreted.  For example, people can tell from your tone of voice whether you are joking or serious. When I write, I have to worry about whether my words might offend someone (unless, of course, I don’t care if I offend them, telemarketers being a prime example).  When using instant messaging, you don’t really have the time to contemplate your words, or think about what you are saying – you want to keep the conversation flowing.  Granted that if you’re about to say something really obnoxious, you have a couple of extra seconds to reflect on it before sending, but I don’t know if that cancels out the ease with which text can be misinterpreted by the receiving party, due to the lack of audible cues about the sender’s intent.

Anyway, I think Garrett Smith makes a valid point here.  Voice communications are dying out insofar as younger people are concerned.  And personally, I am willing to lay the blame for that primarily on the backs of telemarketers, “survey-takers”, and others of their ilk.  You can see the difference in people’s attitudes between those who lived most of their lives before telemarketing became such an obnoxious practice, and those who grew up watching their parents fume over (and sometimes curse at) telemarketers that interrupted the dinner hour. If you think there’s another reason for the communications “generation gap”, please feel free to leave a comment.

And by the way, when I ask people to leave comments, you really should consider that people who write blogs judge the success of those blogs partly by the number of comments they receive.  Back when this blog was on Blogger, I did not post for many months because I thought I wasn’t receiving any comments, and that no one was reading the blog.  I later found that Blogger wasn’t notifying me of new comments. Well, WordPress does notify me of new comments (at least I’m pretty certain they do), but readers of this blog – if there are any – haven’t been leaving many comments.  The other thing I notice is that the “top posts” list – a list that is automatically generated based on the number of times each post is accessed – always shows that posts that are not “on-topic” for this blog rank the highest. So perhaps this “generation gap” even reaches to this blog – not only are telephone calls falling out of favor, but perhaps so are blogs that deal primarily with telephones and other means of voice communications???

Unless something happens that makes me believe that I’m not just writing a personal diary here, I may soon be finding another outlet for my efforts.  I’ve already scaled back on everything else related to telephones and voice communications – in the last couple of years I discontinued the MI-Telecom mailing list (which had become ineffective, in part because it was being blocked as potential spam at many sites – thanks once again to the people who think that every means of communications is intended for them to use to intrude on people’s lives while trying to sell something) and I also took down much of the web site, which had become outdated (and in that case also, I had little indication that anyone was actually using it.  Since taking it down, I’ve received exactly two e-mails from people who miss it). The only reason I’m not yet persuaded to abandon this blog is because there are quite a few subscribers to the newsfeed (the thing you subscribe to by clicking on the little orange button). However, I’m aware that many people subscribe to a lot of newsfeeds, but don’t actually read all of them (I’ve personally been guilty of that at various times). So I still don’t know if anyone is actually reading this blog.

That’s why comments are like gold to a blog author – they let the author know that people are not only reading the blog, but sufficiently motivated by it to add their own thoughts.  And I’m in the somewhat ironic position of writing a blog primarily about voice communications, which perhaps holds little interest for the text-based generation, which would logically be the group most likely to actually type out a comment every now and then! So folks, if you like this blog (or any blog), you might want to consider leaving a comment now and then so the author knows that he’s not just wearing out his keyboard prematurely for no good reason.

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Want to beta test a VoIP directory/social networking service?

January 18, 2008 at 4:09 pm · Filed under VoIP ·Tagged ,

Does it ever bother you that your friends, family, business associates, etc. have no way to look up your number now that you are using a VoIP service? Maybe this will be the answer. If done correctly, and if it catches on, this could potentially become like Google or Yahoo insofar as VoIP lookups are concerned:

We’ve just launched the beta of a free service which is, really, still
only JUST out of the alpha stages.

http://www.voipmagnet.com

The basic idea is this: it’s an opt-in directory focused on VoIP contact
info (with elements of social networking and privacy control).

Again, the service is very rough, but we’d like input from the VoIP
community. There are a good many things that are likely buggy, broken,
or not yet implemented, but we feel that’s what a beta is for.

More information here:
Voip Phreak – » [asterisk-users] OT: Call for beta testers (well… perhaps late Alpha)

I have no knowledge of the company behind this service, so the above is not a recommendation – I’m just letting you know that this service is becoming available, should you feel like trying it out.

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Petoskey News-Review: Making connections: Some eye regional cooperative to expand broadband availability

January 18, 2008 at 12:54 pm · Filed under Broadband, Wireless ·Tagged , , ,

Those of us who live in places where there are two or more choices for broadband access may sometimes forget that there are large areas of Michigan where no broadband access is available.  The people who live in those areas, however, are getting tired of waiting for the phone and cable companies to hook them up, and are exploring other options:

This week, many potential stakeholders met in Gaylord to consider a new regional approach to broadband expansion.

Internet providers, public officials and economic development and information technology professionals were among the 100 or so people gathering at the University Center Wednesday.

Three dozen or so volunteered to be part of an exploratory committee, which will consider possibilities for forming a regional broadband cooperative.

Counties tentatively proposed for the cooperative’s service area include Emmet, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Otsego, Antrim, Kalkaska, Crawford, Oscoda, Alcona, Alpena, Montmorency and Presque Isle.

“A cooperative is a business that’s owned and controlled by the people who use its services,” U.S. Department of Agriculture representative Traci Smith said. “This cooperative allows them to purchase their supplies at a lower rate than they would otherwise.”

Read the full story here:
Petoskey News-Review – News – Making connections: Some eye regional cooperative to expand broadband availability

I hope this works out – if the phone and cable companies are dragging their feet in bringing high speed connectivity to certain areas, then other options are needed.  Actually, this is true even in areas where you wouldn’t think it should be a problem to get broadband.  I’m aware of a situation in northern Muskegon County where some folks want broadband but can’t get it – they are too far from the Verizon central office, and they are on a side road that’s between two main roads, each of which is served by a different cable company, and neither of those companies has run cable down their road.  A strange situation but frustrating for them, and I’ve heard other stories of people who are just beyond reach of the cable lines, and the cable companies refuse to extend their lines (or won’t do it unless the customer pays a fee roughly equal to the local branch manager’s annual salary).

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The slippery slope of metered pricing for broadband

January 17, 2008 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Broadband, Regulation, cable, consumer ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

There have been a few reports surfacing this week that Time-Warner intends to try a metered pricing scheme for broadband service  down in Beaumont, Texas. I’m not sure why they picked that town but I’ll bet there’s not a lot of broadband competition there. Or perhaps Time Warner has friends on the Beaumont town council. Whatever…

In any case, The Consumerist points out that metered bandwidth to consumers might lead to unintended consequences.  They point out that,

Although tiered pricing is often touted as a means to resolve fears of a “bandwith crunch” on the Internet, the model may also serve to constrain one of the Internet’s biggest sources of innovation — user-created content, particularly home videos and movies uploaded on sites such as YouTube and Joost.

Bandwith-heavy services such as video hosting and sharing may never have gotten off the ground if users were concerned about exceeding caps on their bandwith, and if tiered services are adopted by cable and telecom providers on a nationwide basis, it may lead to slower usage of file-sharing services and video-sharing sites.

While that might mean fewer videos of pets performing silly tricks, it could also severely restrict the many ways Internet users communicate and share information via the Web.

Full Consumerist article here:
Time Warner To Test Metered Pricing For Broadband

I want you to stop and think for a moment – how much of the content that you download, view, or listen to via the Internet is NOT produced by large corporations with deep pockets? How much of that content is available to you for free, just because someone had something to say or to share with the world? That is the content that is endangered by metered pricing.

Sure, maybe the world could get by with fewer funny pictures of cats, or videos of people making fountains by dropping mints into cola, or even user-generated articles like this blog.  Maybe you can do without VoIP – after all, your cable company would be happy to sell you their version of phone service, and apparently quite a few of you see nothing wrong with getting phone service from your cable company, even if they do charge you twice the price of an independent VoIP provider. But mark my words, metered bandwidth will make us all poorer.

Let me tell you what I believe is the phone and cable company wet dream for Internet service:  You pay them a monthly fee for the service – the “base rate” just for providing a wire or fiber to your home – and then you pay additional charges for the traffic you use.  Chances are, the charging mechanism will be so obscure that you will not have any way to verify whether you are being charged accurately, or whether they are just pulling some usage number out of their … um, hat. But also, the people who provide the content you view or download will have to pay, or their packets will never reach you.  so you will pay once to have the service, again to have the packets get to you, and the people you serve up the content will also pay.  Oh, and maybe they slip in a few “unfees” while they are at it. Meanwhile phone and cable company executives will get multi-million dollar salaries and “golden parachutes” that will keep their great-great-grandchildren from ever having to work if they don’t want to.

Now I hear you cry, “but that’s not what Time-Warner is proposing at all!”  Well, of course it isn’t. They aren’t that stupid, and maybe not even that greedy – yet.  But the problem is, any type of enforced metered billing sets up the “slippery slope.”  Large corporations, and even governments, have learned well how to play the game.  You start out charging a small amount, and maybe to only the “top 5%” or so.  Then every year or two, you increase the amount charged, while also increasing the percentage of people who have to pay it.  The beauty of the system is that eventually it creates an “us against them” situation – by the time the top 30% or 40% are having to pay, they are looking down their noses at the “bums” who aren’t paying, and complaining that those folks are getting a “free ride.” If your great-grandfathers are still living, ask how many of them had to pay income tax during the early years, and what percentage of income was actually taxed, and compare it to what people are paying today.

As with taxes, once a usage charge is implemented, it NEVER goes away (unless, perhaps, it falls flat in the initial trials). And lest you think taxes and metered billing are unrelated, consider that for over a century the government had a usage-based tax on phone service. It certainly isn’t inconceivable that as people have to give up more of their income for broadband service, the government will see that as too good an opportunity to pass up, and will impose a “luxury tax” of sorts on broadband service – again, I don’t expect this will happen in the immediate future, but who knows how the politicians will be thinking about the Internet in ten or twenty years, especially if it turns into a medium that’s primarily commercial in nature (with much of the free content gone the way of the dodo bird).

Now, apparently some folks just don’t understand this.  Even David S. Isenberg is talking as though this is a good thing, because in his mind it means that broadband providers will be open and transparent about managing congestion.  He writes:

If you must manage congestion, then doing it explicitly is, at very least, honest. It is better than doing it (a) covertly or (b) indirectly, by injecting artificial interrupts and (c) denying you’re doing it — like Comcast currently does.

But that’s assuming that if they can meter bandwidth to end users, they won’t engage in any of the covert or indirect methods of limiting broadband.  However, that would logically only be true if they are making significant sums by allowing such content to flow without interference.  If only the top 5% of users are going to see extra amounts on their bills because of this scheme, that logically means that 95% will be free to continue doing what they’ve always done, without paying any more.  Do you see the problem?  If there really is a bandwidth shortage – which, by the way, there shouldn’t be if companies would properly engineer their networks – then there will be a strong temptation to apply the metered billing to a larger percentage of the customer base, or to use surreptitious methods to limit the bandwidth used by those customers not paying on a metered basis.

Furthermore, metering bandwidth is not something that you can apply the “lesser of evils” test to, because the problem is that it will grow like a cancer if not nipped in the bud – just because it may be the lesser of evils today doesn’t mean it won’t be a much greater evil a few years down the road. And beyond that, it opens a myraid of new opportunities for customers to be ripped off by providers.  The moment you meter anything, you then have the expense of metering (which, of course, gets passed on to the customer) AND you have the problem of making sure that the metering is accurate.  That implies that you either need a government bureaucracy to investigate claims of inaccurate metering, or you simply get into a “wild west” situation where companies can charge hapless consumers whatever they want, and if the customer suspects that the billing is inaccurate, tough luck – there’s no real recourse (particularly in areas where there’s little or no competition).

When I was a child, growing up in the 1950’s, kids didn’t just pick up the phone and call their grandparents (if there was any distance between the two), because a long distance call was a significant expense back then.  In our family, about the only time long distance calls were ever made was on Christmas or someone’s birthday (and my parents would still try to end the call within three minutes, even after the phone companies dropped the three-minute minimum).  I’m sure we will never go back to that, but do we want a situation where parents have to think twice about sending videos of their kids to the grandparents, or about letting the kids conduct long video calls over the Internet? That may seem ridiculous now, but maybe a new technology will be invented that will be too expensive to use over limited bandwidth (think some sort of 3-D presence – the technology exists now, but it’s too bandwidth-intensive for all but dedicated, very-high-speed connections). Do we want that technology to be metered, so that the new applications never see widespread usage, or in the alternative, shouldn’t we expect broadband providers to increase their available bandwidth, in order to keep up with the new technologies?

And as a final thought, why would bandwidth providers have any incentive to increase bandwidth to end users if that means that fewer people would have to pay for excess usage?  Have you noticed that traditional wireline phone companies still only give you minimal bandwidth of 0-3000 Hz or thereabouts, even though audio circuits capable of reproducing sound to the limits of human hearing (and beyond) have been available for decades now? If phone service had been flat-rate across the country AND there had been multiple phone companies that customers could have chosen from, my bet is that we’d have telephones capable of at least FM radio quality speech by now. The phone companies had the monopoly, they charged based on usage, and they gave consumers as little as possible in the way of innovation, except when they thought they could make a few extra bucks a month.  Is that the model you want to emulate for broadband service?

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AT&T stockholders, have you considered the possible unintended consequences of AT&T’s content filtering plans?

January 17, 2008 at 6:46 am · Filed under AT&T ·Tagged , ,

If not, Slate Magazine lays it out for you.  Here’s an excerpt:

….. But the most serious problems for AT&T may be legal. Since the beginnings of the phone system, carriers have always wanted to avoid liability for what happens on their lines, be it a bank robbery or someones divorce. Hence the grand bargain of common carriage: The Bell company carried all conversations equally, and in exchange bore no liability for what people used the phone for. Fair deal.

AT&Ts new strategy reverses that position and exposes it to so much potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&Ts fiduciary duty to its shareholders. …..

Full article here:
Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?A baffling proposal to filter the Internet – By Tim Wu – Slate Magazine

If you own AT&T stock… well, okay, anybody that owns AT&T stock probably isn’t reading this blog. But on the off chance that you know someone who owns AT&T stock, you might want to give them the above link.  I’m certainly not a communications lawyer, so I cannot say whether AT&T is setting themselves up for increased legal exposure.  But having said that, even with my limited knowledge of the situation, the points that are made in that article seem quite valid to me.  What do you think?

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Comcast can’t move community access channels yet, says judge

January 16, 2008 at 4:16 am · Filed under cable, litigation ·Tagged , ,

Looks like those Comcast community access channels are staying put for a while…

Comcast cannot move community access channels higher up the dial — and out of the reach of thousands of Michigan cable subscribers with analog televisions — under a temporary order issued by a Macomb County judge.

Read the complete article via the Great Lakes IT Report.

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Why hidden fees are a big deal – Gotcha Capitalism

January 15, 2008 at 11:34 pm · Filed under DSL, Regulation, Telephone, VoIP, Wireless, cable, consumer, customer service, satellite television

FINALLY the major media is starting to see this as a problem, though I fear this will not stay on their radar long.  The following is an excerpt from the book “Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day and What You Can Do About It” by Bob Sullivan, as posted on MSNBC’s site:

When I was a child growing up just outside New York City during the 1970s, I learned to be afraid of getting mugged. But this is not that. The criminals I’m talking about don’t bop anyone over the head and steal hundreds of dollars. These criminals slowly take $5, $10, and $20 from me, often with a smile. They pop a surcharge onto my monthly phone bill. They pad my TV bill with services I didn’t ask for. They drain my bank account — drip, drip, drip — when I’m not watching. These hidden fees keep me up late at night like the sound of a leaky faucet. I feel like I have to watch everything all the time, because it’s so easy to miss some statement on some form with some asterisk that means the company can take even more money from me. And when that happens, I suffer from what I call small print rage.

Read a much larger excerpt here:
Why hidden fees are a big deal – Gotcha Capitalism- msnbc.com

Mr. Sullivan has figured out that these sneaky fees are costing the average American $946 a year. In another article at MSNBC’s site he has listed ten tips to avoid sneaky fees and demand fair treatment. Readers of this blog may find tips 3, 4, 9, and 10 especially interesting and enlightening.

You want to know what I think?  Personally, I think that the companies and executives that come up with these fees … well, let’s just say that I’d really like to tell you what I think of them, but there might be minors reading this, and I don’t think I could truly express how I feel about them in any manner that would be acceptable in a blog intended for readers of all ages.

BroadbandReports.com also mentioned the above article. They’ve been great about shining the spotlight on companies that engage in this type of false advertising, and I hope they continue to do so.  The problem is that a lot of people post their gripes in their forums, when they should be sending their complaints to their state Attorney General or Public Service Commission. If you’tre going to complain in a forum, you might as well save yourself the effort of typing your complaint, and just call up one of your siblings, or go out on the street and find someone to complain to – it will have about the same effect. People, please, stop just putting up with corporations stealing from you.  Would you let someone walk into your home and smile as they carted off your possessions, or took a few bills out of your wallet or purse? Heck, would you let your kids do that? Then why do you let big corporations do it to you, without a word of protest?

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XO Communications Announces Bandwidth Pricing for Phone Calls

January 15, 2008 at 6:36 pm · Filed under Broadband, Telephone, VoIP ·Tagged , , , ,

Tom Keating is reporting the following in his VoIP & Gadgets Blog:

XO Communications tomorrow will announce bandwidth-based pricing offering for converged IP services. Instead of paying per minute for voice calls like both traditional TDM and even current VoIP offerings do, XO will be completely bandwidth-based pricing.

Full story here:
XO Communications Announces Bandwidth Pricing for Phone Calls

This could be big, or it could be ahead of its time – in any case, charging for phone calls on a minutes-of-use basis makes no sense, unless you are a traditional phone company with a captive customer base and use that method to rip people off (I have posted paragraphs in the past about why per-minute pricing is inherently unfair to customers, beginning with the fact that customers cannot see, nor verify the accuracy of, the “meters” used to determine when charging takes place, and therefore have no way to know if they are being billed only for time actually used. I’ve heard stories of customers being double-billed for calls, or billed when getting busy signals, etc. – and then there is the fact that most telephone company expenses are unrelated to minutes of use, so it’s basically an arbitrary billing method).

I expect that, barring the phone companies retaining a lot more clout than I think they will (it’s hard for a dying industry to retain its power), per-minute pricing will all but disappear within a decade or so (it may still persist in some backward nations, or in a few situations where very limited bandwidth is available, but it won’t be the norm). Bandwidth-based pricing makes a lot more sense, encourages a more competitive market, and more easily permits customers to verify whether they are actually getting the service they are paying for. Let’s see if this is the beginning of the end of the old wireline telco pricing model.

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Stupid VoIP companies invite government regulation

January 14, 2008 at 5:13 pm · Filed under Regulation, Telephone, VoIP, government ·Tagged , , ,

I came across two articles today about VoIP companies that are doing things that just invite additional government regulation. One of the articles is about Vonage, which is allegedly blocking the ability of their customers to call certain numbers that belong to people who were once Vonage customers, but have since ported their numbers away to another provider. As long as I live, I don’t think I will ever understand why people think they should be able to take their phone number with them (the wireline phone companies will change your number if you move, often even if the move is to another part of the same city that happens to be served from a different central office switch), and if I were switching to another VoIP provider, I’d get a new number from that provider – but then again, some people have dozens or hundreds of people they’d have to contact to let them know of a number change, so I guess they’d like to avoid that effort if possible.

However, that said, VoIP is not wireline phone service, and if a customer ports ther number away from a VoIP company, there is no valid reason that company should do anything other than release the number. Blocking calls to that number from their remaining customers may just give some of those customers sufficient motivation to leave. If I were getting service from a phone company (VoIP or not) and found that they were blocking calls to perfectly valid numbers, either because they were retaliating against an ex-customer or because their employees were idiots who couldn’t figure out how to get that number out of their database, I’d certainly consider that a very powerful incentive to move along to a different carrier myself. What’s they use of having phone service if you can’t call the people you want to call? I understand that occasionally this happens through no fault of the company from which the customer receives service, but instead is a problem of an upstream carrier – still, that means that the company needs to find an alternate route for such calls (one that actually works), so that customer calls aren’t blocked.

The other stupid VoIP trick is one shared by many VoIP companies, but the latest complaint is about AT&T CallVantage, which apparently is increasing their “carrier cost recovery fee” on February 12. This is not a government mandated fee – for many VoIP companies, it’s often simply a way to increase the price to end-users without including that price in their advertising (at least not in any conspicuous place). The problem with this is that it makes it impossible for customers (and potential customers) to compare prices without calling each company (or digging into the depths of their web site) to find out what the actual monthly charge will be – and even then, if they call they have no way of knowing if they are getting accurate information, since customer service reps themselves often don’t know exactly what charges are added to the monthly bill.

Since this trick smacks of false advertising – in effect, they price you’re asked to pay is not the one prominently posted on the web site or in print ads – I’m still amazed that in all this time, no state attorney general has yet taken up this issue. I find it hard to believe that no customers have complained about the practice. There are companies that only collect the taxes and fees that they are required to collect by government entities, but often these are smaller companies that don’t advertise to consumers.

These are the sort of tricks that just invite government regulation of the VoIP industry (and the telecommunications industry in general, to the extent that these practices might be found among other types of carriers). If telecommunications customers knew how little effort is actually involved in filing a complaint with a state Public Service Commission or Attorney General (very often there are online complaint forms available – you simply fill in a web-based form that involves little more than typing in your complaint and giving your contact information – or in the alternative there may be a toll-free number you can call to file your complaint), I suspect there would be a lot more complaints about these types of customer-unfriendly practices. And given enough complaints, I’m pretty sure that action of some kind would follow.

Anyway, I may be wrong, but I think that the VoIP companies that engage in such practices are walking a dangerous path – they could bring down regulation (or other sanctions) not only upon themselves, but the entire VoIP industry. This will hurt the “good” VoIP companies as much as the “bad” ones, and that will be unfortunate for all of us who use VoIP.

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The Morning Sun: Complaints against Charter Communications “have increased dramatically”

January 13, 2008 at 3:25 am · Filed under Regulation, cable, customer service ·Tagged , , ,

Excerpt from The Morning Sun, which covers Isabella, Gratiot and Clare Counties in mid-Michigan:

Charter Communications, the monopoly that controls the cable TV in mid-Michigan, is either cutting back and ignoring its customers or trying hard to be the best it can be, depending on who you talk to.

Jan Howard, executive director of the Mid Michigan Area Cable Consortium, said the number of complaints she has received from customers about Charter Communications have increased dramatically since the inception of the Uniform Video Services Local Franchise Act last year.

Full story here

Possibly the unintended consequences of the Uniform Video Services Local Franchise Act that was passed last year?

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Distracted teens + iPods = death!

January 12, 2008 at 4:10 pm · Filed under Apple, consumer ·Tagged , , , , ,

The Muskegon Chronicle brings us this sad report:

PORT SHELDON TOWNSHIP — A teenager listening to an iPod was killed Friday when he was hit by a car as he and three friends walked on Stanton Street near U.S. 31, Ottawa County Sheriffs Sgt. Steve Austin said.

Full story here:
Police believe iPod distracted teen killed by car – Muskegon Chronicle – MLive.com

This is actually a worldwide problem, at least in parts of the world where there are both iPods and automobiles. In Australia they are running a clever advertising campaign warning teenagers of the dangers of crossing the road with an iPod going full blast.

Now, anyone as old as I am should realize this isn’t a new problem – ever since the original Sony Walkman came along, people have been killed because they were listening to music when they should have been listening for oncoming vehicles.  And even before that, we had shirt-pocket transistor radios with earphones (but at least those only fit in one ear).  When the iPod is long gone, people will probably find some new way to pump music into their heads. So I’m not blaming the iPod, it’s simply the latest way that one can tune out the world and listen to their own selection of music.  The only problem is, sometimes tuning out the world can be fatal.

Kids at a certain age really do think they are invulnerable. Parents, maybe you should have a talk with your kids about the danger of restricting one’s ability to hear oncoming hazards, especially while on a public street, or even a sidewalk. Just to be clear, I’m NOT suggesting that the government try to become more of a nanny state than it already is, and try to pass laws restricting kids from using such devices (which would largely be ignored anyway – look at how well the laws designed to keep kids from smoking have worked, and I’m actually in favor of those, but I still can’t say that they work very well).

I think that the real issue is that neither parents nor teenagers seem to realize there’s a problem with blocking out the ambient sound (that would normally warn one of approaching danger) until it’s too late, and some unfortunate teenager dies, and then that usually only gets local coverage (as in this case).  So I’m calling attention to this article, in the hope that maybe it will save someone else’s life.

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