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The Telecom Digest for January 27, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 24 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 02:46:04 -0600
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
Message-ID: <8ZGdnWWxbMZRCp7MnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <barmar-E480B5.16590725012013@news.eternal-september.org>,
Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <20130125163342.GA20190@telecom.csail.mit.edu>,
> Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
>
>> Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
>>
>> By Jerrod Nielsen
>> CREATED JAN. 24, 2013
>>
>> A [Idaho] House committee has agreed to debate a bill to lift the ban
>> placed on the ability of telephone companies to make customer cold
>> calls.
>
>So is this proposal throwing away the DNC list entirely, or just
>exempting telephone companies from it?
I dunno. But any Idaho legislative action is irrelevant to the federal
telemarketing rules and federal DNC list.
The existing Idaho law may be stricter than the federal one. the original
report is unclear, but it may have prohibited all cold calling =even=
where there is a pre-existing relationship. Note well the report says
"to make CUSTOMER cold calls." {emphasis added}
There's little need for a state DNC list, when the federal one exists.
This looks to me like 'tempest in a teapot', since Idaho telcos would (a)
have to honor federal DNC listings, and (b) maintain their own DNC list,
which trumps any "pre-existing relationship" exemption. So, the Idaho
action might allow -one- formerly-prohibited 'cold call' from each telco
that you are a customer of. Rachel is likely to call more than that.
Date: 26 Jan 2013 23:40:30 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
Message-ID: <20130126234030.81501.qmail@joyce.lan>
>>So is this proposal throwing away the DNC list entirely, or just
>>exempting telephone companies from it?
>
>I dunno. But any Idaho legislative action is irrelevant to the federal
>telemarketing rules and federal DNC list.
If you'd read the original article, you'd have seen that it's about an
Idaho law that prohibits telephone companies from telemarketing to
their own customers. The federal DNC list is about telemarketing to
non-customers.
I'm inclined to put a petition on the White House web site for a
consitutional amendment to make telemarketing punishable by death,
with a private right of action. What do you think?
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 13:26:28 -0800
From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
Message-ID: <ke1hm6$8re$1@blue-new.rahul.net>
On 2013-01-25 08:33, Bill Horne wrote:
> Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
This is one case where "Anonymous" ought to act in the public interest. Somebody
should threaten to make public the home phone numbers of every legislator who
votes for this bill. Sauce for the goose!
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:15:19 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Car-Sharing Services Grow, and Expand Options
Message-ID: <p06240805cd29bea4cd15@[10.0.1.2]>
Car-Sharing Services Grow, and Expand Options
By STEPHANIE STEINBERG and BILL VLASIC
January 25, 2013
WASHINGTON - As more companies and even nonprofits enter the
fast-growing business of car sharing, they are offering consumers new
ways to customize their short-term rentals for convenience,
reliability and cost.
Take the expanding Car2go service from Daimler, the German luxury-car
maker. It rents only two-seat Smart cars, charges customers by the
minute instead of the hour, and allows for one-way rentals and free
street parking.
That appealed to Austin Fossey, who turned to Car2go when his
pregnant wife, Brooke, went into labor at 2 a.m. on Thanksgiving
morning. He pulled up the Car2go app on his cellphone and reserved a
tiny Smart car parked near the couple's home in Washington. Car2go
was exactly what they needed - a one-way drive to the hospital, at 38
cents a minute, with free parking on city streets and no requirement
to return the vehicle.
"We wanted to just drop the car off and not have to worry about it,"
Ms. Fossey, 31, said in a recent interview as she held her newborn
son, Ethan.
Car2go is one of about two dozen car-sharing services in the United
States, and its one-way vehicle rentals are the latest wrinkle in the
growing industry.
Providers range from small, nonprofit organizations to big
corporations like Hertz, a longtime leader in the car rental
industry, and Daimler, which started Car2go five years ago in Germany
and now operates 1,800 vehicles in six American cities.
New players are also getting in, including Avis Budget Group, another
stalwart in the traditional rental business, which earlier this month
agreed to buy the vehicle-sharing company Zipcar for $491 million.
They are all drawn by the rising popularity of car sharing. Last
year, about 800,000 people belonged to car-sharing services in the
United States, a 44 percent increase from 2011, according to Susan
Shaheen, co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research
Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/business/car-sharing-services-grow-and-expand-options.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
Car sharing, to my view, is the killer app. It's not the product that
matters, but the fact that the logistics of finding and renting and
getting a bill for a short-term rental can be done with a smartphone.
This is a new level. It's the point where everyone is so used to
having the capability that they don't even wonder whether else
anyone does. This is the same knee point in the the curve where the
first pizza-delivery service started to take calls.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2013 13:11:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Smith <marklsmith@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
Message-ID: <1359234705.25859.YahooMailNeo@web122306.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
On Friday, January 25, 2013 12:18 PM, Matt Simpson <net-news69@jmatt.net> said:
> In article <20130125163342.GA20190@telecom.csail.mit.edu>,
> Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.kivitv.com/news/local/188310211.html
>>
>> From the article:
>> "Lobbyist and former Idaho Rep. Jim Clark says the bill gives
>> customers the ability to opt-out from solicitation calls."
> So maybe they could make a list of all the customers who opt-out.
> And they could provide the list to telemarketers and say "Do not
> call these people". Maybe they could call it a "Do not call list".
> But there must be some catch that makes it less effective than the
> existing law, or the lobbyists wouldn't be pushing it.
It probably removes the capability to sue them. Only lawyers can
afford to do this, but it's the one thing that's been used
successfully.
Mark L. Smith
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