The Michigan Telephone blog

I’m passing along the following information, received from someone who wishes to remain anonymous (and I will respect that). So if you like, treat this as unverified information, wild-ass guess or what you will, but I suspect it’s pretty accurate – I guess we’ll know for sure at some point this afternoon (note that when he says “tomorrow”, that’s probably “today” for most readers, unless you’re in a western time zone and you catch this post when it first appears):

Tomorrow there will be a speech on building modular GUIs for FreeSWITCH. This is really an announcement of the new FreePBX v3. It will be demoed at Cluecon tomorrow, Wednesday, at 3pm. FreePBX 3 is a collection of ideas from the TCAPI and Phonebooth project merged with the lessons of the FreePBX and AMP projects. The community is still being run and coached by Philippe Lindheimer, but the lead on the TCAPI project (and some of its code) has been ported to a brand new framework – now known as FreePBX 3. More information is at http://www.freepbx.org/v3/

You should be aware that FreePBX 2 is NOT going away or suffering from a lack of development – infact, Philippe is likely releasing the next revision of FreePBX 2 shortly.

The software aims to be fully modular while remaining open source. When we say modular, this involves both modular switching and modular functionality. You don’t have to use the system as a PBX, although initially that is what most modules will revolve around.

So there you have it. Very interesting, no?

As if you haven’t read enough already, right?

Normally I’m not a person impressed by celebrities. I remember one time, when I was much younger, helping a friend out with a show that was essentially an opening act for a private birthday party for someone who was very big in the motion picture business (people today might not recognize the name, but let’s just say he was a huge name in the 30’s and 40’s, and this was like his 80th birthday party, if I recall correctly).  It was held in the Palmer House in Chicago, another institution that had once been huge, but was already past its prime. There were some big name celebrities there (one big TV star in particular) and everyone was going ga-ga over the fact that all these big shots were around.  And I remember being totally unimpressed – I was so tired from the setup work we’d done that I wouldn’t even go out to see the show. Everyone looked at me kind of funny, but I just explained that those people didn’t impress me, and I meant it.

But I would have gone to see Michael Jackson.  I liked his music.  Unlike most folks, I think I liked him better when he was with the Jackson Five (I didn’t care for “Thriller” much, although the song “Billie Jean” definitely got stuck in my head for a while).

The reason I bring this up is that I remember when I first saw the Jacksons on TV, probably when I was in my late teens, and upon learning that Michael was only eight years old, I remember thinking “this kid has already done more with his life than I will probably ever do with mine.”  And I think it was the first, and maybe one of the only times that I was ever genuinely envious of any celebrity.  Of course, I had no way of knowing that he’d been raised in an allegedly abusive home (I can’t believe that his father is being allowed to take care of his kids, even temporarily!), nor how much he envied “normal” kids. And I certainly had no idea of the paths his life would take, nor how it would end. I suspect that when the dust clears, there’s going to be plenty of blame to go around for who caused his death (see this article from the U.K. Daily Mail for some additional insight), but probably not enough to pin on any specific individual.

I’ve always said that groups of individuals will do evil that no one of them would do if solely responsible (hence my dislike of large corporations, which are almost always evil to some degree). That was probably the case here. No one person killed Michael, but many people – primarily greedy people – took their toll. It may have been a case of “death by a thousand cuts”, some much deeper than others.

In any case, looking back, it’s obvious how foolish I was to in any way be envious of Michael Jackson. And nowadays, I always wonder why celebrities seems to have so much “clout” with the public. Why can they get elected to public office, even if barely qualified for the job? Why can they address legislative bodies on social matters, delivering their opinions as if they were some type of authority on any subject? Why do people look up to them at all?

If there’s any lesson to be learned from Michael Jackson’s life and death, I think it is this: Although we can appreciate the talent a particular person may have, we should not wish to be them, nor to emulate them. Sometimes it seems as though the bigger they are, the more troubles they have, and the more likely they are to fall into a destructive lifestyle and (sometimes) early death. Not only that, but if they have kids, those kids will always be in their shadow. No matter what Michael Jackson’s kids do, they will always be known as his children, for whatever that is worth. Would you really want that sort of life? I wouldn’t, and most people wouldn’t. Michael was sort of forced into it by the choices his parents made, and by the time he was old enough to make his own decisions, much of the direction of his life had already been set. Would you want that sort of life for one of your kids?

I’m not big on organized religion (to put it mildly), but one thing most major religions teach is that envy is a destructive force. And it really is, but the kicker is that most of the people we envy (celebrities in particular) we probably would not envy at all if we really knew what they were going through. Is envy driving your life, or your aspirations for your children’s lives? Just something to think about.

Thank you, Michael, for all the great music.

Sometimes, when you want to know the answer to a question, you need only ask.  I sent the following e-mail this morning to a Frontier Communications e-mail address, after receiving the initial press release but before some of the later reports had been released:

I’d like to ask two questions about your Verizon acquisition plans. First, will you be acquiring ALL of the wireline telephone exchanges in the affected states, or just some of them (I’m specifically interested in Michigan, but just wondered if you’re taking over all the wireline operations in the states mentioned in your press release, or just some of them).

And second, will you be expanding the FiOS footprint to include states in the upper midwest in which Verizon’s FiOS deployment has been slow to non-existent? Again, I’m specifically wondering about Michigan, but Verizon has been giving the cold shoulder to several of the states in the upper midwest with regard to FiOS.

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

This afternoon I received the following response from Ken Mason, the Vice President of Government and Regulatory Affairs for Frontier Communications:

Other than CA, we will be acquiring all of the Verizon ILEC operations in the affected states (including MI). On FiOS, we plan on continuing the operations in markets that are currently in place, including meeting the existing build out requirements but, at this point, there are not plans to expand into new areas.

If you would like to discuss, feel free to call me at [number redacted].

So there you have it, the official word from someone who should definitely be “in the know” on the subject.  I must say that I’m impressed that they responded to my e-mail so quickly, I just wish the news with regard to FiOS was a bit better!

To those of you outside of Michigan, please bear with me while I post about a Western Michigan issue.  Go read this story in the Muskegon Chronicle – it’s short (only four paragraphs) and to the point.

Muskegon County is a funny place.  There are places that are racially mixed, and people of different races seem to get along just fine.  But there are also places that are not so diverse.  It’s not exactly overt discrimination, it’s just that in certain neighborhoods you get the strong impression that if you are of the “wrong” race you might not get along so well with your neighbors. If you look at the county as a whole, I think that race relations are probably better than in some other Michigan counties, and if you don’t like diversity you probably shouldn’t be living there.  But that said, there are the neighborhoods that are mostly black or mostly white.  The Oakridge School District probably tends to fall into the latter category. Some of its neighboring districts have a much higher percentage of black students.

What bothers me about the article is that the Oakridge School District says that the policy (of not accepting students from other districts) is one of their “six points of pride.”  Which raises the question – why should any district be proud of any form of non-acceptance?  That ought to be a point of shame.  If the reason you can’t accept other students is that your schools are overcrowded, or that you can’t afford enough quality teachers, or any other valid reason I can think of, that’s no reason to be proud.  If, on the other hand, you are offering a quality education but you are afraid that a student from an adjacent district might want to take advantage of it, well, that sure sounds like it might be a case of thinly-veiled racism from where I sit, and that’s certainly nothing to be proud of.

As it happens, I’m white, but I see that there are good (and bad) people of all races. When I was younger, I had hoped that my generation would be the one that would eradicate the scourge of racism from our nation.  Well, we’ve certainly come a long way, but then you see things like this which in my opinion are a step backward. It seems to me that the Oakridge School District has some explaining to do, and if they don’t want to explain, then they should understand that some people will perceive them as racist bigots trying to keep their schools as white as possible. And even if it turns out that they have a valid reason for not accepting “schools of choice” students, they probably ought to re-think calling it a point of pride.

miken32 writes:

The process of creating a module for FreePBX is, in theory, documented in a number of wiki pages, but these are worse than nothing. Full of outdated information — some of it labeled as such, some of it not — as well as broken links and vague promises of information “to be determined,” this collection of pages does more harm than good. Here, then, are some pointers to get a module working, presented as a list of files you need to have in your module’s directory.

Read the rest of the article here.

Although this article is pretty short, at least he’s making some effort to document how to create a module, which is more than the current FreePBX team ever did. In the past they have reminded me just a bit of the type of person who occasionally complains that no one ever offers to help, but then if someone does try to help they just can’t seem to meet the other person’s high standards. And the first person will never tell you exactly how things are supposed to be done. They’re the type who will say, “Nevermind, I’ll just do it myself, it’s easier for me to do it that to explain how.” Which is fine until you want something done that they have no real interest in accomplishing.

photo credit: That HP Chap

To me, that’s always been the problem with FreePBX – it’s a fabulous piece of software until you want to get it to do some little thing that it doesn’t currently do. Then, because of the way it’s designed, it’s nearly impossible to slip your modification (which might only entail adding two or three lines of code to a dialplan) in where it’s needed, because many of the configuration files get overwritten any time you make any change using the FreePBX web-based interface. Their preferred method for adding new features is to add a module – which again is fine, except that a) hardly anyone can figure out how (except the development team), and b) they only want modules written in PHP – too bad if you are an expert in some other language, and c) even if you overcome those hurdles, there are no guarantee that your module will be accepted, since it will probably violate some as-yet-unwritten design considerations (though you are free to distribute it as an unsupported module).

Anyway, at least miken32 has made some effort to document what he has learned so far, and I hope he’ll continue to document what he learns about FreePBX module creation. I would suggest that he add his information to the FreePBX Wiki, but that’s something else that’s difficult to use (compared to most wikis).

Puzzle question: What company would pay good money for DHL 2-day shipping to send a customer an unsolicited plastic bag? Might we assume that a certain large phone company would be capable of this? Of course we might!

Excerpt from AT&T: Your plastic bag. Delivered.:

Yes, it was an unsolicited, rush delivery, plastic iPhone bag. This is definitely not a first for AT&T and the monetary waste involved in packing and shipping a completely unnecessary plastic bag is, I assume, passed back to the consumer. Next time you look at your AT&T bill, you can think about my MISC iPhone PPA BAG … which I’ll be cherishing forever. Or at least until the novelty wears off.

Full story at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

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

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

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

Read the rest of the Verizon press release.

Go here.

photo credit: billjacobus1

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

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

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

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

photo credit: orbz

Quote from the site:

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

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

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

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

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

Has Anyone Read the FCC’s USF for VoIP Order yet? To lift from Stephen Colbert, “Is it bad or the worst thing we have ever seen out of Washington?”

In a monumental act of misdirection, the FCC released an Order making all prior regulations of VoIP (both Interconnected and potentially peer-to-peer) look like kindergarten musings.

All I can do is ask: Was recent DC activity on Capitol Hill a calculated effort of misdirection of David Copperfield proportions (David Copperfield of modern magic and Claudia Schiffer fame, not the David Copperfield of Dickens fame, although many a VoIP provider might, as a result, find itself living in a Dickensian “Bleak House” as a result)?

How come we couldn’t see the humungo elephant right in front of our eyes? While we were amassing all our troops on the hill trying to protect our flank on the eastern front, we were getting wiped out this week on the western front. Why does the FCC say VoIP providers give us all your money?

Frankly, many of us got sucked up in the hysteria on Capitol Hill. Perhaps we should have figured out a better way to divide and conquer. I kind of hate the analogy, but I feel a little like Germany in World War I (World War II is simply too disturbing an analogy), fighting a war on two fronts – the Eastern Front on Capitol Hill and the Western Front at the FCC. While we were amassing all of our troops on Capitol Hill with our current allies (e.g., Google, yahoo, Amazon, eBay), we were quietly getting wiped out on the Western Front with little news of the massacre reaching us on the Hill.

What were we fighting for on the Hill? To move the line of scrimmage a few inches towards Net Neutrality? Maybe we should have left that political battle to the better heeled, better connected behemoths of the Internet. In turns out we had a fight for our lives on the Western Front. …..

Full article here. Take some time this weekend to read it and think about it.

According to this MSNBC story, that’s just about what happened to this guy:
How hard can it be to cancel an AOL account?

Two weeks ago, Vincent Ferrari tried to cancel his 5-year-old account—he’d heard from others in the blogosphere that AOL customer service could be awful. So he recorded the conversation with a representative named John. Here is the transcript of the conversation: [more...]

More commentary on this story, including a link to the actual audio, can be found here.
My attitude when calling to cancel something would be this: I don’t owe you any explanation other than that I’m no longer willing to pay for the service. That should be sufficient. EVERYTHING else is irrelevant, and none of your damn business.

Were it not for credit card billing, we’d simply be able to say something like “go ahead and leave the service on if you want to give it to me for free, but I’m not paying you another dime!” and that would put them on notice that it would be in their best interest to turn off the service.

However, when credit card billing enters the picture, things get complicated because even if you explicitly say no, they can attempt to keep billing your card. And then you are put in the position of trying to explain to your credit card company why a charge that you have authorized for months is suddenly no longer a valid charge.

Here’s what I’d love to see someone in Michigan do, though. Before calling to cancel a service where the CSR’s are known to give departing customers a hard time, I’d like to see them call the Michigan Attorney General’s office and see if someone there would be willing to listen in during a three-way call, then use three-way calling to bring in the customer service representative. Just let the AG staff listen in, and count the violations of Michigan consumer protection law. Heck, the state of Michigan could probably make a few thousand bucks on each call, if there really are violations taking place.

In fact, maybe that’s an idea for states that want to make some easy money, given the declining cost of toll charges. Pass some strong consumer protection legislation, which authorizes creation of an “Attorney General’s call recording line”. The idea is, when someone wants to call a company and figures they might do something illegal during the call, they first dial a toll free number at their state AG’s office, which reads a short explanatory message, gives them a tracking number for the call, and then a second dial tone, whereupon they dial the toll free number of the business in question. The call is then recorded. If the call proceeds satisfactorily, the customer simply hangs up at the end of the call and does nothing further.

If, however, the company says or does anything that the customer believes may be illegal, the customer has 24 hours to go to a form on the Attorney General’s web site and enter the tracking number, and some details that would identify the nature of the alleged infraction committed by the company. An AG staff person would then review the recording to see if it appears to be actionable under the state’s law, and then go from there. Recordings for which no web site complaint is filed would be deleted after a few days. Depending on how good a deal the state can get on in-state long distance, they may decide to allow calls to go through to in-state (non-toll-free) business telephone numbers as well, so that problems with local and regional businesses could be recorded and tracked.

This could probably all be set up with an Asterisk box and VoIP service (inbound and outbound) for a few hundred bucks a month (I’m just guessing here because I do not have the expertise to set something like this up, but I suspect that’s pretty accurate), which could easily be recovered with just one significant fine. The hardest part would be figuring out how to eliminate abuse (that is, people simply using the line to get a toll-free call to a business, when they have no intention of making a complaint). But I think that it could be made to work, assuming that anyone in government is still the least bit interested in seeing that customers are treated fairly by big corporations.

The following quote is from an article in Techdirt with the above title:

….. Larry Lessig points out that Gary Reback (the famed lawyer who spent a good part of the 1990s trying to get Microsoft taken down for antitrust violations) is focusing on a new case: showing how the telcos and the government broke the law in approving some of the recent big telco mergers (the same mergers that helped those telcos get rid of competition, now allowing them to do things like get rid of network neutrality). In this case, the claim is that the mergers were approved while the Senate held back the Justice Department appointee charged with enforcing antitrust law (over concerns that he might actually, well, enforce antitrust laws). Once the deals were approved, the Senate dropped their hold on the appointee. Following this, the Justice Department is accused of ignoring parts of antitrust law (the Tunney Act) that forbid backroom dealings between corporations and governments on antitrust matters, and approving the mergers before a judge could do a review to make sure the Tunney Act wasn’t violated. …..

Read the full article plus reader comments here. I, for one, would like to see a full investigation into these allegations.