Telecom questions answered! Free of charge!

[BigMcLargehuge]

Had so much fun answering a digital phone service question last night I thought I'd open myself up to other questions about telecom doings and workings.

So hit me with your best and I'll see what I can do off the top of my head!

Questions about area codes are already spooled to my mascot in the field, Phoney McRingring!

Phoney: Hi, I'm Phoney McRingRing, mascot and president of the
telephone company, and I'm here to explain why the
convenience of one area code in your town splice] has been replaced by the convenience of two area
codes.

You're probably thinking, "Sure, more area codes are
great, and I don't mind paying the extra hidden fees, but
how will I remember all those numbers?"

tumbling out, burying Phoney] Whoa!

Well, scientists have discovered that even monkeys can
memorize ten numbers. Are you stupider than a monkey?

[MaineDem]

1. Is this the party to whom I am speaking?

:evilgrin:

[BigMcLargehuge]

2. Please choose from the followin options -

press 1 for billing
press 2 for customer service
press 3 to confirm a service appointment
press 4 to listen to MUSAK
press 5 to switch to our representative in Bangalore who will fail to pronounce your name correctly
press 6 to repeat these options

[lpbk2713]

3. I retired after 35 years with the nation's largest RBOC.

And I have always had one predominant burning question that I have never found a real good answer for. If telephone companies are in the communication business, why is it so hard to communicate with them? If you think this is a problem as a customer, try getting a point across to the right people as an employee. I would still be there now if it wasn't for burnout.

[BigMcLargehuge]

5. at least in the case of the RBOCs I think it has to do with their

position as inventors and distributors of the US phone system for 80 years prior to to Judge Green's summary judgement. Depending on what it was you were trying to communicate also factors into it.

I'd think that, even as an employee, it would be hard to discuss evolving business models or non-in-house technologies.

[MaineDem]

7. I'm a retiree too

And I think communications with the company is worse now. There is NO form of retiree newsletter or anything. I miss that most of all. (I've been retired for 10 years now - probably from the same company as you.)

[Maddy McCall]

4. Does Altell suck as badly as I think it does?

:hi:

[BigMcLargehuge]

6. dunno what Altel is, is that a company, a service...

can you give me more information?

[BigMcLargehuge]

8. kick for the evening crew

:kick:

[Misunderestimator]

9. Why does my broadband phone slow down my cable connection

but only SOMETIMES? And why do I have to reboot my modem and routers every time that happens? :shrug:

[BigMcLargehuge]

10. it's not broadband phone (assuming you mean digital phone service)

that's slowing your connection. The reduction in transmission throughput is most likeley do to an upsurge in users on your neighborhood node.

Of course, if you mean VoIP over Broadband, such the service offered by Vonage, it's the packet buffer in the VoIP modem that slows things down, which generally only happens when the network is low on latency because the packet arrive at a faster rate than the application can play them out of the buffer. Once packets start dropping the cable modem alerts the headend that it is experiencing congestion, or conversely, if the headend notices it requests that the cable modem throttle back it's transmissions (assuming you are doing most of the talking).

[Misunderestimator]

11. It's vonage.... Here's the situation.

It seems to happen almost every day during a morning conference call I have at 8am ET... funny thing is that I do none of the talking on that, and it is 5am my time, so I don't think the neighborhood traffic would be very heavy. Then, I also have a regular 4pm meeting, in which it hardly every happens. I talk some in that meeting. But it's 1pm here at that time, and you would think the traffic would be higher.

Any ideas on what I can do about it? For now, I've taken to enduring the meeting with little (virtually no) network connection, then unplugging the phone router and rebooting the modem and wireless router. The connection is perfectly fine again after that.

[BigMcLargehuge]

12. I am going to assume there is a configuration screen or something

ON EDIT!

AHA! the crucial piece of the puzzle! You say you aren't talking on the 8AM meeting. It is entirely possible that your Vonage service considered your phone "off hook" if it receives nothing but a "status" messages, at a specifi interval, from your end of the connection over a certain period of time.

In VoIP, when you don't talk, your connection doesn't sent packets. This makes VoIP very efficient, but it can also trick the receiving end of the connection that you are off hook accientally.

I'd bet you a box of donuts, if you speak a bit ever five minutes or so, the connection won't drop.

that will let you set buffer size, at least their should be.

AS for shutting down the modem/router, you shouldn't have to shut down both. It seems that one of those pieces of equipment, I am going to go out on a limb and say the router, reaches a traffic threshold and shuts down.

It could also be that the conference call generates more packets than the buffer can play out at the proper rate, which would be a by product of a low-latency network status.

[Misunderestimator]

13. Interesting.... I will look into configuring it differently.

They do have suggestions for what to do if your calls have static... maybe I will try that. Past that, I don't think there are too many options for user configuring.

It IS interesting the it only happens on a conference call... even when these are conference calls I dial in to a central location, it's possible that there's some overload there from the other sources... and the 8am call has 12 lines dialed in, whereas the afternoon call has only 2 or 3. Vewwy interesting.

Thanks! I'll let you know what happens. :hi:

[BigMcLargehuge]

14. did you read my edited information

ON EDIT!

AHA! the crucial piece of the puzzle! You say you aren't talking on the 8AM meeting. It is entirely possible that your Vonage service considered your phone "off hook" if it receives nothing but a "status" messages, at a specifi interval, from your end of the connection over a certain period of time.

In VoIP, when you don't talk, your connection doesn't sent packets. This makes VoIP very efficient, but it can also trick the receiving end of the connection that you are off hook accientally.

I'd bet you a box of donuts, if you speak a bit ever five minutes or so, the connection won't drop.

[Misunderestimator]

16. Hmmmmmm.... no I didn't read the edit...

I will definitely try that... even if it's only to clear my throat (with 12 lines on, they'll never know who it is :)).

THANK YOU! This has been a big consternation for me the past few weeks. I will definitely let you know if it works out.

[BigMcLargehuge]

18. please do!

[matcom]

15. My Question:

If my chicken wants to call 900# phone sex lines, but doesn't have opposable thumbs to dial the number, will you as a company accommodate his wishes?

[BigMcLargehuge]

17. she can use the -

hunt and peck method!

(bah-dum-dum-tsssss... thank's everyone, I'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your server)

[matcom]

20. i dated a girl who did that once

married her too :P

[BigMcLargehuge]

22. LOL

Hi Mrs. Matcom!

[DS1]

19. If I can remember one thousand numbers, am I one hundred times stupider

than monkeys?

[BigMcLargehuge]

21. Oooo oooo oooo AHHH AHH AHHHHHH (flings excrement)