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Message Digest 
Volume 28 : Issue 253 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
  Sky-high travel phone bills nearly bust house payment 
  Re: Sky-high travel phone bills nearly bust house payment   
  Re: Dr. James Marsters, TTY deaf service developer 
  Re: AT&T Relents, Drops Paging Instructions from Voicemail 


====== 28 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:22:45 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Sky-high travel phone bills nearly bust house payment Message-ID: <p06240814c6d0eaa27d63@[10.0.1.3]> Sky-high travel phone bills nearly bust house payment By Christopher Elliott Tribune Media Services (Tribune Media Services) -- When it comes to "gotcha" fees, the cellular phone industry makes travel companies look like rank amateurs. Take what happened to P. Morgan Brown when his wife decided to take a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Indonesia. Her Verizon bill came to a staggering $8,000. Text-messages home cost an astounding $2.50 each and the meter was running at an eye-popping $1.75 a minute for phone calls. ... http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/traveltips/08/28/cell.phone.saving/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:57:36 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Sky-high travel phone bills nearly bust house payment Message-ID: <b5de86dc-bb30-4d92-b7eb-eed9e8dca98f@j39g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> On Sep 12, 11:24 am, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote: > Her Verizon bill came to a staggering $8,000. Text-messages home cost > an astounding $2.50 each and the meter was running at an eye-popping > $1.75 a minute for phone calls. Historically, overseas telephone charges were extremely high. Likewise, cellphone roaming charges outside your home area used to be high (mine was $1.00/minute). Even after new cables allowed reductions rates were still high. Given that, I would think a traveler would check into rates cell and landline rates in advance, especially from a distant place like Indonesia. Unfortunately, today it's hard to find out what rates are. It used to be to simply dial the operator at any time and she'd tell you. But now with the many phone plans and carriers it's hard to find out. Many people today have free calling within the continental (48 states) so rarely have a need to get rates. But there's usually a charge, possibly a steep one, to call or use a cellphone outside the 48 states. Calling "customer service" can mean a long wait and inaccurate infomration from an overseas based automaton. (If anyone knows a good way to easily find out landline and cell phone special rates please share it with us.) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:19:21 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Dr. James Marsters, TTY deaf service developer Message-ID: <6d1a5050-0fc7-4e94-baf0-87147b7910df@s39g2000yqj.googlegroups.com> On Sep 12, 12:56 am, David Clayton <dcs...@myrealbox.com> wrote: > And that sort of behaviour - replicated by many controlling telco's > all around the place - ultimately led to their demise as it just > highlighted to everyone that they were holding things back for their > own interests. This is not true. Please note my recent post in this thread (9/11-2:19 pm). > It's amazing the resentment that can build up in > people/business/governments when some tech company tells them that > they must do things their way or take a hike - and as soon as an > opportunity arises to weaken that sort of power it usually happens in > a manner way out of magnitude to what would have been necessary, and > then most people sit back and say that they deserved it...... I would suggest your statement is inaccurate or a gross [over]simplification. In the U.S. the power companies tell residential and small business customers they MUST use [the] 110 or 220 [volt] 60 Hz power that they supply. If that's not acceptable, it's up to the customer to buy and install power conversion devices. Yet, no one seems to mind that. When I was [a] kid I used to experiment with electricity, using a No. 6 dry cell as a power supply (1.5 V DC). It never occured to me or my parents to expect the power company to supply me with such current so I wouldn't have to buy batteries. Nor when I got older and experimented with phones, did I expect the power company to provide me with smooth 24 V DC for my switchboard. (The rectifiers in toy train transformers aren't very good for phone service.) Our municipal sewer authority tells us things we may not flush down the sink or toilet. They go into businesses and inspect to ensure there is a grease trap so no cooking grease gets into the system. Yet, no one seems to mind. Nobody likes getting a speeding ticket. Yet the townsfolk regularly come out to town council and demand the police be ever more aggressive in citing speeders going through twon. > Has anyone made a list of classic "Shot themselves in the foot" > behaviour of Telco/IT companies and the ultimate consequences? > I imagine it could be quite a long list by now. I would suggest that such issues are not black and white, and most "resentments" fail to stand up to a close scrutiny of all the facts. (Again, see my above post about many business restrictions imposed on the Bell System and IBM; restrictions not imposed on their competitors). The fact is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but consumers do want the cheapest yet fanciest lunch possible. Something has gotta give. In public service, officials who prepare budgets quickly learn there is a big gap between what citizens are willing to pay and what services they expect. That gap leads to "resentments". Sadly, far too often good leaders have been voted out of office because of "resentments", but they were not at all justified by the facts. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:05:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: AT&T Relents, Drops Paging Instructions from Voicemail Message-ID: <705003.86049.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:29:02 -0400 tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net> wrote: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> AT&T Relents, Drops Paging Instructions from Voicemail > > Now if T-Mobile will back down from their newly instituted fee of > $1.50/month for mailing out our monthly paper billing statements, > I'll really start to believe in consumer power :-) . You need to keep up :) http://tmotoday.com/blogs/william/09/11/2009/t-mobile-backs-down-paper-billing-charge ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright (C) 2009 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (4 messages) **************************************

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