Verizon recently announced new discounts for wireless only customers interested in Internet or television service. Called the “Flex Double Play” bundle, the discount offers a reduction of $8 - $12 a month for people combining Verizon Wireless with broadband or TV services.
Now, remember of course, that Verizon originates from the traditional POTS provider, Bell Atlantic. Back in the 80’s (1983 to be exact), when there was one big phone company called Bell, the US government decided that Americans would benefit from 7 companies instead of 1 big one. The 7 smaller phone companies, or “Baby Bells” were to handle local phone service and allow other companies to handle long distance.
With that historical digression, please remember that Verizon essential developed from this split; therefore sometimes still thinks like a traditional POTS provider.
How so you ask?
Well, the discount sounds great — but the big phone companies just don’t know how to provide something without conditions. If you want the fastest DSL or FiOS plans, you get no discount. The discount will only be offered towards DSL plans of 3 mbps and FiOS plans of 20 mbps.
Still, if you don’t want the best of the best, saving up to $12 a month still adds up to a nice deal. Maybe they should read our Wireless Only article to learn more about Wireless Only customers.
Telephony Online reports investors of XO, fearing the worst, want the ouster of the company chairman, Carl Icahn. Apprently, XO managed to create a debt of more than 400 million dollars.
XO Communications provides leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Data & Internet, Network Transport, Managed, Hosting and Fixed Wireless Access services to businesses, enterprises, government, and carrier & wholesale customers nationwide.
When our nation’s respected educational institutions subject sensitive data to the public, it’s time for the public to educate the educators. Sure, encryption is not the end all, god save the queen solution for protecting ourselves. But, encryption is a great tool and can provide a strong foundation for additional security measures.
The time for excuses is over. After all, our hero Benjamin Franklin used to say, “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.“
Welcome to this week’s Voip Cast. In this week’s chat, we discuss topics such as George Michael, Skype, encryption, airports, slot machines, super-heroes and more.
You can download this week’s podcast for FREE at these fine locations:
News.com (CNET.com for those who kick it old school) posted a great article about privacy, encryption, and security with instant messaging (“How safe is instant messaging? A security and privacy survey“). Not only did CNET.com make a nice, pretty chart of their findings, they actually talked to the most popular IM choices and some of the answers are really intriguing.
Among the many questions asked by CNET.com were:
Does your service keep server-based logs of the content of communications, meaning what a particular user sent and received?
Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to turn over information about a user’s IM account?
If so, how many law enforcement requests have you received?
Have you ever received a subpoena, court order or other law enforcement request asking you to perform a live interception or wiretap, meaning the contents of your users’ communications would be instantly forwarded to law enforcement?
The standard answer to these questions was the ol’ standard that communication with Law Enforcement is not discussed — aka, we fully comply. Skype though gets huge points from us for many reasons.
Investing 300 million dollars over 10 years, the Social Security Administration now leads the US Government in telephony technology – simply switching to Voice over Internet (VoIP). The contract was awarded to Nortel. At first, the figure 300 million boggled us. Then, using the complex mathematical equation of 300 million dollars divided by 10 years, we determined an average cost of 30 million dollars a year.
Before you flip out and say to yourself, “My goodness (we’re keeping it G-Rated), 30 million dollars a year on phones??? What is our government thinking?”
Shocking as it may seem, we at Voip Tech Chat applaud the Social Security Administration’s decision. Sure, as huge (again easy with the fat jokes please) fans of Benjamin Franklin, Patrick and Fred often are publicly vocal and critical of decisions made by the US Government. Yet, when a good decision is made, we try to be equally supportive.
When we see “government study,” we’re often immediately sent into a digression of thought. What would possibly motivate an official to take tax-revenue and give it to a group of government employees to learn about something of this nature. And then, we usually get so frustrated that we turn to the bottle for answers. This being said, more often than not, a study that you could never imagine as needed will generally provide at least one or two interesting results.
The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) exists (in theory) “to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.” For more than 60 years, the CDC has pursued malaria, studied plagues, eliminated polio, fought small pox, and even studied cell-phone usage. Um… studied cell-phone usage? Yeah, that one caught our eye, too.
At first, we were under the belief that maybe the CDC had investigated the rumors of cell-phone brain cancer or something to that degree, but as John Pinnett would say, “Nay Nay.”
Network World is posting a timely article (
News.com (CNET.com for those who kick it old school) posted a great article about privacy, encryption, and security with instant messaging (“
When we see “government study,” we’re often immediately sent into a digression of thought. What would possibly motivate an official to take tax-revenue and give it to a group of government employees to learn about something of this nature. And then, we usually get so frustrated that we turn to the bottle for answers. This being said, more often than not, a study that you could never imagine as needed will generally provide at least one or two interesting results.
