 
Dennis
Premium,Mod
join:2001-01-26
Algonquin, IL
2 edits | Glad to hear they're going out of businesss From what I remember they were basically robbing students with their high prices because they didn't have a choice. | |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
 ·Comcast
| Re: Glad to hear they're going out of businesss Me too... remember AT&T ACUS... charging outrageous per-minute prices for long distance calls? Yuck. I also remember the last time I had to fight with an ex-roommate who ran up the local phone bill on his own and then refused to pay it because he was leaving the country. I almost had to rip his head off before he coughed up the cash to cover the charges. It will be nice to see fewer students going through that hassle.
Cell phones are much more practical anyway, given that many students change residences each semester. It only makes more sense to have one phone number which stays with you for all that time.
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Hey Fast Eddie... you're next! | |
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pnh102
Reptiles Are Cuddly And Pretty
Premium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD
·Comcast
| Re: Glad to hear they're going out of businesss said by gdm  :Oh I hated that company!!! I believe I got a cell phone my 2nd year of college and it was 20x cheaper. My problem was that at the time (mid-1990s) cell service was still expensive and nationwide calling plans were non-existent. Bell Atlantic Mobile was nickel-and-diming me on just about anything they could (remember the days of 99 cent a minute roaming?). Personally, I am glad that cell service has plummeted in price and that the phrase "long distance call" no longer has any meaning.
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Hey Fast Eddie... you're next! | |
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gdm
Premium,MVM
join:2001-06-15
Mchenry, IL
clubs: | Re: Glad to hear they're going out of businesss Yeah luckily I was able to afford ATT one rate when I got cell service. I think I paid like $75 for 1000 minutes or 600 can't remember but LD included and no roaming which was nice since I went out of state alot. | |
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| Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
Premium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | charging people to make local calls from a private telephone should be illegal. but colleges and motels still do it.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports | |
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sbrook
Premium,Mod
join:2001-12-14
H0H 0H0
·Rogers Hi-Speed
Host:
Rogers
Bell Canada
| To think people earn a living quoting stats! What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. (That's not a realistic number btw ... just a number to show that this is not really a dramatic increase ... significant, maybe ... dramatic as it might seem, no way.
Of course they're pulling landlines out of dorms. It costs money to maintain them. With Cell, all the responsibility is now on the user. | |
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av8r
I'd Rather Be Flying
Premium
join:2002-06-14
Boca Raton, FL
clubs:
| Re: To think people earn a living quoting stats! said by sbrook :What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. I think it was Mark Twain that said, "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians."
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"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" - Frank Zappa | |
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| | SlashG42
join:2002-02-13
Metairie, LA | Re: To think people earn a living quoting stats! "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." --Attributed to Disraeli in Mark Twain Autobiography (1924) vol. 1, p. 246 | |
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| | bmn
? ? ?
Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
 ·Packet8
| said by av8r : said by sbrook :What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. I think it was Mark Twain that said, "There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians." That's cause the guy who said that apparently didn't take a stats course...
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64 bit CPUs and OSes? That's so 1996.
Viva La Fee' Verte! | |
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join:2003-02-13
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clubs:
| said by sbrook :What a meaningless statistic. 60% increase on say 10,000 homes is 16,000 homes. It rose from 2.0 mln in 2002 up to 3.2 mln in 2003.
That's not a meaningless statistic. | |
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Logwind
join:2003-06-20 |  I hate cell phone culture.
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Omega
Displaced Ohioan
Premium
join:2002-07-30
Cheyenne, WY
clubs:
 ·Verizon Wireless B..
·Comcast
 ·AT&T Midwest
| Re: I hate cell phone culture. said by Logwind :I refuse to buy one. If that means paying 50 cents to make a call home while on campus, so be it. You must live close to home then.
My school is only an hour away from my house. Yet, it is in a different area code, and any call home would constitute as long distance. The 50 cents from the payphone would add up quickly.
I could subscribe to a phone service, if I wanted to be ripped off. The local phone calls are 20 cents a call, and long distance is outrageous.
Then I have my cell phone - $40/month, free long distance, and free nights and weekends. With the amount of out of area code calling I do, I save a lot of money.
Since more students have cell phones, that means that if you are on a local plan, you might have to pay long distance to call the person who is next door to you.
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My site
SBC DSL 2650/384 | |
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J D McDorce
Premium
join:2001-12-29
Westland, MI
| Back in the Day While I need to go back a couple decades to revisit my own dorm life, the phone in my dorm room was more of a PITA than anything else. Beyond sharing the phone with two roommates, we were rarely there except to sleep (and, at times, not even then). There was also no such thing as privacy.
It's hard to say whether college campuses are a unique set of circumstances or reflective of a trend. It would follow, however, that as students become acclimated to their electronic tether and less reliant on land lines, they may tend to view land lines as obsolete once they leave college behind.
The only place where I see VoIP factoring into the equation is that many colleges offer high speed connections to their dorms. The use of VoIP as the only option for voice in the dorm room would eliminate the need for the campus to manage and maintain both POTS and data connections to each room. In this case, VoIP is merely a different form of land line, placing an entirely different spin on the cell/VoIP only revolution: VoIP competing with POTS for land line service and cell phones placing into the question the need for a land line (POTS or VoIP) at all. | |
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pcscdma
Chocobo Chocobo Random Battle
Premium
join:2004-01-14
Winterset, IA
clubs:
| Re: I plan on it. said by moby866 :I can't even get a pizza delivered without explaining it 3-4 times to different people when I call in. Not addresses, though very similar -
One of the pizza places here would not accept cell phone numbers for deliveries. Their stupid computer system would always say "Out of Delivery Area" and the employees would have no idea what the heck to do. They could write it down on a piece of paper, but it took a few minutes to realize that you could actually take an order without using a computer.
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"The bad news is that we are told that Michael Powell, one of Washington's better bureaucrats, is calling it quits today after four years at the helm of the Federal Communications Commission." - WSJ 2005/01/21 | |
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voip911subscriber
@rr.com
| WOW!!! If you can get pizza delivery you should be happy. No pizza place within 17 miles of where I live. If you are in a town big enough for pizza delivery you are a lot better off than I am. I have vonage and called 911 with no problems just the other day. | |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| Re: I plan on it. I use my cell phone number for pizza deliveries because the pizza joint's computer won't update my landline from my old address and I'm tired of telling them a new address each time--so I just started giving my cell and it works great.
Guess if I move again in town, I'll have to get a new number from one company or the other, or I'll have to visit the pizza joint and have a personal conversation with them about updating my address.
Dodging this problem using different phone numbers reminds me of dodging Microsoft vulnerabilities by using AV, AntiSpyware, and firewall products from other vendors. All because of stupid people and/or stupid programming.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! | |
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| | lesopp
join:2001-06-27
Land O Lakes, FL | No delivery, there's always DiGiorno  | |
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gabeman
join:2001-05-03
Philadelphia, PA
clubs:
·Hotwire Communicat..
| It's Real My school doesn't even offer the ability to add long distance service. Each room has a line with a local number that can call within the campus, 800 numbers, and receive incoming calls. It is included with the price of your room. The only way to make long distance calls of any kind is using a calling card or cellphone. I use my cellphone. I actually don't know anyone who goes to school here that doesn't have a cellphone (maybe they're the people who spend all day/night in their rooms).
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| pantani101
join:2003-04-12
Camp Hill, PA
| Re: It's Real I don't even know the room phone numbers for my kids at college. Even worse, they don't either. When we need to talk, its always with the cell phones. Except for the schools calling for donations and telemarketer calls, we would be getting less than 3 real phone calls a week on the land line. We eliminated long distance on the land line and do not miss it at all. | |
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Techless
Like I care
Premium
join:2002-07-19
Hypoluxo
·Vonage
| The Telcos Don't Get It YET The railroads once owned transportation in the USA.
They lost that because they thought they were a railroad company, not a transportation company.
The railroads made their customers find another company to provide a truck to get the cargo to the railroad and yet another truck to get the cargo from the railroad to the eventual destination.
They had an opportunity to provide transportation but didn't realize it and only provided a railroad.
It really didn't take long for the truckers to see that they could deliver it themselves without all the loading and unloading.
Today most goods are delivered from origination to destination by truck. There are the piggyback rail cars but they are hired by the trucking companies. So the railroads are now working for the trucking companies.
The telcos are now in a similar place.
They have the poles and leased space on poles. They can leverage their advantage and own all forms of communication by deploying fiber to the home (FTTH) or they can die a slow death and survive by subsidy only, like the railroads.
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Al • Adelphia HSI • 4000/512 • Will Work For Captain Morgan | |
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| RadioDoc
58ef2c0
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
·AT&T Midwest
| Re: The Telcos Don't Get It YET "So the railroads are now working for the trucking companies." In other words, they are providing transportation like a transportation company should, and they are charging their customers (those oh-so-efficient trucking companies who are dropping like files) for transportation of their cargo. Around here at least over half of the trains are nothing but containers on flatbed carriers. BNSF is doing quite well, too: »finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BNI&d=t
The transition to a more mobile society is more of a reason for the decline of 'land lines' than anything else. However anyone who is even half objective about it will admit that cell and PCS call quality still sucks and is getting worse. If you want to put up with that for $70 a month, go right ahead. Those "land line" companies, who own the cellular and PCS companies, laugh at you during their board meetings.
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The revolution will not go better with Coke. | |
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Jon Geb
Wal-Mart Sucks
join:2001-01-09
Novi, MI | Re: The Telcos Don't Get It YET My cellphone call clarity blows my landline out of the water. Static has been a problem for years here. In 2weeks I'm going cell only. Landlines are for people that arent in the tech age yet. | |
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whamel
Premium
join:2002-05-09
Clarendon Hills, IL
·RCN CABLE
·Verizon BroadbandA..
| College student here As a college student myself, I would say that this article is correct and accurate all the way through. I am junior now at the University of Iowa and I personally do not own/use a land line at all (except for DirecTV updates). That may sound confusing, but I live in a fraternity, and the house we live in has one land line for the cook to use and for us to *technically* recieve calls. The only calls we recieve on that line are solicitors. When i lived in the dorms, my roomate and I didn't even activate our land line in our dorm because we had no use for it, plus it would require us to purchase a land line phone. As for next year, we will be living in a different house, and since we are served by Qwest, we plan on getting a dry pair to our house for DSL, but we'll see. Generally speaking, I do not know one person who actually gets a landline to their apartment or house here on campus anymore, and if people do get a land line, it is usually because they don't have a cell phone. | |
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RayW
Premium
join:2001-09-01
Layton, UT
clubs:
·XMission
| Back around 1995 I was seeing a lady who worked for SWBTS as a sales rep. At that time she was told that they were to try and steer people away from land lines and toward cell phones. It was desired that the only land lines that would be serviced would be those mandated by law for the 'poor' people who were on welfare. But that was before DSL hit the street.
Personally, after 30 years working in the RF field, I have a hard time wanting to put a cell phone up to my head, especially with the operating frequency of 2450 MHz. Other than that though, the idea of cell phones is a good idea since it could be made more national in scope unlike a land line with the 'fees' charged. But I wish I could get one that would have 100 minutes for $10 instead of 1000 minutes + unlimited off prime time for $50 and worked up in the 5.8 gig band.
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I am not lost, I find myself every time. | |
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bklynite
Premium
join:2001-03-18
Brooklyn, NY
clubs:
| Re: Back around 1995 said by RayW :Personally, after 30 years working in the RF field, I have a hard time wanting to put a cell phone up to my head, especially with the operating frequency of 2450 MHz. Other than that though, the idea of cell phones is a good idea since it could be made more national in scope unlike a land line with the 'fees' charged. But I wish I could get one that would have 100 minutes for $10 instead of 1000 minutes + unlimited off prime time for $50 and worked up in the 5.8 gig band. As far as I know, cell phones run in the 750-850MHz and 1900MHz bands. 2.4Ghz I believe is unlicensed band which is why home networking and cordless home phones use it. If cell phones ran in that range, they'd be interfered with by the aforementioned home products, as well as microwaves. They would also have to transmit at exponentially higher power to get the same range. 5.8GHz? You must be kidding. Your range would be dreaful.
On a separate, but related note: I miss 900MHz cordless phones. I could use a cheap one down the block from my house...
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W-Train.com Webmaster | »www.bklynite.com | |
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| | bmn
? ? ?
Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
·Packet8
| Re: Back around 1995 said by bklynite : As far as I know, cell phones run in the 750-850MHz and 1900MHz bands. In the US, its 1900Mhz and 850Mhz...
Most other places, its either 900Mhz or 1800Mhz, but a few use the same frequencies as America.
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64 bit CPUs and OSes? That's so 1996.
Viva La Fee' Verte! | |
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| Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
Premium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ
1 edit | the reason cells are so popular in asia and europe is i hear they have huge waiting lists for a landline turn on, where as here in the US you can get a number and be up and running pretty fast even with copper pair. the construction of a cell network is also cheaper, one tower probally can handle more calls then your average copper bundle and adding a new line to an account doesnt depend on having available copper, heck some cell phones nowdays can have two lines without needing another phone. | |
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scooper
join:2000-07-11
Youngsville, NC
| Choice for the Consumer is a good thing There are times and places that mobile phones are not all they are cracked up to be. I will never get rid of my landline (unless it's to use a VoIP over cable) because the wireless just isn't "good enough" at my house. There are other locations where it is "good enough". The nice thing is that we do have these choices - you as the consumer can pick what works for you.
I'm using basic landline, w/DSL, and we each have our own VirginMobile. The wife's company has given her a business Nextel (she works at home). Neither of the wireless is perfect in the house - and it's worse TRANSMITTING than receiving. About the only wireless phone that really worked for us was my old, 3watt analog BAG phone. A device that could do a "relay" in and out of the various mobile phones would help alot. Until then, the wired line stays. | |
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footballdude
join:2002-08-13
Imperial, MO | campuses? Nowhere is the cell/VoIP only revolution more evident than on college campuses
Wouldn't that be campii? | |
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RiverCityKid
@cityofsacramento.org
| Toll Grade-NOT! If you're paying $50+/month for crappy cell phone service I hope you really enjoy being able to yack any time/any where you want. I've spent almost 30 years in the industry and when I talk I'm still looking for a toll grade call. For me, cell service is for when you have to talk but there's not a land line available. I find it amazing that those younger than me have accepted that cell phone quality is "normal" and worth paying a preminum for.
The service providers are laughing all the way to the bank. | |
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Jon Geb
Wal-Mart Sucks
join:2001-01-09
Novi, MI | Re: Toll Grade-NOT! Weird, my cellphone is digital while my landline is analog. The cellphone should have better sound then the landline. Whens the last time you checked out a new cellphone? | |
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The Death of Landlines
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