In both the United States and Canada, telephone calls are so extremely cheap that it isn't the limiting factor. You only pay when the call is actually completed, you're only billed in six-second increments.
It is easy to get 1.9 cents a minute telephone rates in the US, with any bulk capacity at fractions of that. One Canadian company will give access to major Canadian cities at 0.6 cents a minute with a minimum commit of about 250,000 minutes.
In both cases, however, the labor costs are significantly higher than the $1.19/hour the long distance costs.
There still is a cost to VoIP calls: bandwidth costs money. Does it cost 0.6 "cents a minute"? I haven't done the math, but I'd venture to guess that it's still not what costs money: having a live body to handle the call once somebody does answer is what's gonna cost.
The rapid increase of telemarketing on land lines generically has spawned a whole host of solutions to this "problem", from the only marginally effective legislative angle (the US Gov'ts "Do Not Call" registry) to the completely effective technical ones like Caller ID Whitelisting services offered by the telephone companies.
Ultimately, since most of the VoIP services that have any leverage just extend the PSTN to a network connected voice terminal, the solutions remain the same. Don't accept uninvited sessions from unknown hosts at the terminal. Don't ring the phone for an unknown caller ID. Direct the caller to an IVR asking them for their name, and then give the caller the opportunity to accept or reject the call.
Lastly, perhaps the most effective "anti-spam" measure for voice spam of any kind (be it conventional telemarketers or some new-fangled network-enabled approach) is the simple auto attendant. Even though I don't have numbers in the do-not-call registry (and I see suspect calls hit my Asterisk system all the time) I _NEVER_ get any spam calls. My autoattendant has a voicemail default route and no route for 0 or 1.. this leave s about 99.999% of all junk calls dead in the water.
It was part of the deal. Broadcasters accepted the loss of spectrum in exchange for this converter handout.
This is as much a "free ride" for the broadcast industry as anything, but it actually is putting the US Government way ahead.
Could have it been handled better? Perhaps, but by in large, We The People will have a technically better television system as a result, and the US Treasury will have a lot more money that they didn't have before.
Trusting the US Government is about as stupid as trusting a website with a PO Box listed on the domain registration and no phone number or address on the Contact Us.. page.
While data for the last tax year isn't available, from 2000 the top 10% of all taxpayers paid 40.1% of the income tax paid to the Federal government, while those earning less than $20k a year represented around 5% of the total tax liability paid.
Even though the top 10% only represents 2.2% of all taxpayers, and those in the under 20% bracket represent over 30% of all taxpayers.
Instead of just implementing it as a tax credit (which wouldn't really cost much of anything), the US Government's Department of Commerce is spending millions to process applications, create an infrastructure to accept coupons (which are a form of electronic debit card), and to then put the money in retailer's hands.
It would have been cheaper for the US Government to buy a couple of million boxes, delay the cutover until 2010, and give them to the Census Bureau to distribute when they count the Census.
Whether or not the entire idea of giving people a converter box, as opposed to "letting the market sort it out" itself is another story, but one we'll leave for another generation.
Well, you do have to go through the kind-of clunky "are you a human?" intelligence test.
I ordered mine pretty much when the website went online, and got my coupons about three weeks ago.
Get the Zenith DTT900. It's about the best one on the market right now. The only feature it does not have is analog pass-thru, which is likely only required if you live somewhere with translators that aren't going digital (ie: the "boonies"). It's sold at RadioShack stores.
Sending out $40 coupons for a $50 converter, rather than just telling people to take $40 off their tax liability and submit a receipt sounds like a good starter.
Problem. They have already "redeemed" the $40 coupons issued by the US Government, and it would appear that consumers are out the "money" (on both counts: the NTIA has paid the retailer, and the consumer doesn't get their $40 off the converter).
It seems doubly stupid, given the fact that a lot of people have had good luck with the Zenith converter being sold at your corner Radio Shack store.
However, you are missing the bigger point. It isn't _JUST_ a DTTB standard receiver. There's a whole network that China has installed to make it work.
Have you tried receiving ATSC signals while mobile? It sucks, mostly because the ATSC standard doesn't really handle multipath very well. The Chinese "mobile TV" system supposedly solves that problem by using low-power repeaters in a specific frequency band.
If it works, it is "cool", and something we don't have in the English-speaking world.
The Chinese device isn't just a simple tuner for conventional over-the-air broadcasts.
The Chinese government has built a micro-cellular style video distribution system on top of their conventional HDTV broadcast signals specifically designed for mobile reception. While the "receiver" mentioned is probably just a DSP (like you mention), it is not necessarily designed to receive conventional Chinese HDTV, but a special lower-power (and I assume higher frequency) broadcast designed for smaller screens.
So you use five 6 MHz QAM1024 signals (each one carrying 50 Mb/s) with a center of 6, 12, 18, 24, and 30 MHz. That still keeps you completely contained within HF, which was my point.
I don't know of anywhere in the world where television and cellular phones live below the VHF boundary.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be trying to work 40 meters anywhere near this hypothetical system.
QAM 1024 gives 50 Mb/s on a 6 Mhz channel. It would only take 35MHz will give you the bandwidth they're talking about.. and that's totally within the range typically used for BPL.
BPL typically uses frequencies much lower than where most TV broadcasting takes place, and is WAAAAY below the frequencies used by mobile phones.
As far as RF exposure goes, these are power lines. The power levels that BPL uses are way below the EMP emissions that are coming off the power lines as the result of.. oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that they are carrying alternating current oscillating at 50 or 60 Hertz?
Now, there is concern amongst users of HF and low-band VHF. Public safety, amateur, maritime, and some broadcast ('AM' [more accurately called "medium wave"] and short-wave) are all well within the frequency bands used by BPL, and in most of the first world these users are very vocal with their complaints.
"Stealing CPU cycles" was a valid argument when we were on 200 MHz Pentium chips.
Considering a "cheap" motherboard now has a dual-core CPU running at a minimum of 2 GHz, it would appear that for all but a tiny handful of applications there's more than enough CPU to go around.
I would gladly migrate the entire enterprise over to Free (either speech or beer) software tomorrow for every single business need - it would eliminate that worry at a stroke - but this is the real world and half-decent Free accounting and payroll applications are pretty thin on the ground.
Ernie Ball Co. had no problems figuring that out after getting stung by a $90,000 BSA audit.
It's all a matter of business priorities. If a small-to-medium-sized guitar string manufacturer can do it, I suspect most shops could figure it.
I was going to come in here and make this exact comment.
I can count on one finger the organizations I've worked for where shareware tools like WinZip were actually properly licensed. At one shop I worked at, I actually had the CFO (who also functioned as the CIO/CTO) say, in these exact words, "oh, nobody actually enforces that WinZip license.. you think the BSA is gonna come in here and bust our nuts over 100 unlicensed copies of WinZip? Get real!".
Three months after I left this company, the BSA came in, did a "software audit", and indeed busted their nuts over 100 unlicensed copies of WinZip (along with other licensing violations).
At the risk of sounding stupid, I'm wondering why people still buy soundcards. The vast majority of motherboards have some version of AC97 audio on them nowadays. Is there some inherent advantage to SoundBlaster cards over the AC97 audio bundled with most motherboards nowadays?
Many switches open a data channel between the switch and Quantico. Telcos are required to deliver not only the voice, but details about the call including supervision status, digits dialed and collected, and even if the tapped phone goes on and off hook.
Typically, this "call detail" information is delivered via TCP/IP from the switch in question. My understanding is you cannot have any stateful packet inspection between your switch and the FBI, because of the potential for this to be compromised.
Because the FBI Academy in Quantico is the clearinghouse for the FBI for all CALEA wiretaps, and acts as a "one-stop shop" for carriers wishing to comply with the law.
Slashdot Mirror
In both the United States and Canada, telephone calls are so extremely cheap that it isn't the limiting factor. You only pay when the call is actually completed, you're only billed in six-second increments.
It is easy to get 1.9 cents a minute telephone rates in the US, with any bulk capacity at fractions of that. One Canadian company will give access to major Canadian cities at 0.6 cents a minute with a minimum commit of about 250,000 minutes.
In both cases, however, the labor costs are significantly higher than the $1.19/hour the long distance costs.
There still is a cost to VoIP calls: bandwidth costs money. Does it cost 0.6 "cents a minute"? I haven't done the math, but I'd venture to guess that it's still not what costs money: having a live body to handle the call once somebody does answer is what's gonna cost.
The rapid increase of telemarketing on land lines generically has spawned a whole host of solutions to this "problem", from the only marginally effective legislative angle (the US Gov'ts "Do Not Call" registry) to the completely effective technical ones like Caller ID Whitelisting services offered by the telephone companies.
Ultimately, since most of the VoIP services that have any leverage just extend the PSTN to a network connected voice terminal, the solutions remain the same. Don't accept uninvited sessions from unknown hosts at the terminal. Don't ring the phone for an unknown caller ID. Direct the caller to an IVR asking them for their name, and then give the caller the opportunity to accept or reject the call.
Lastly, perhaps the most effective "anti-spam" measure for voice spam of any kind (be it conventional telemarketers or some new-fangled network-enabled approach) is the simple auto attendant. Even though I don't have numbers in the do-not-call registry (and I see suspect calls hit my Asterisk system all the time) I _NEVER_ get any spam calls. My autoattendant has a voicemail default route and no route for 0 or 1.. this leave s about 99.999% of all junk calls dead in the water.
Why would they do that?
Seems like one of the largest pushers of DRM is, in actuality, Microsoft.
It was part of the deal. Broadcasters accepted the loss of spectrum in exchange for this converter handout.
This is as much a "free ride" for the broadcast industry as anything, but it actually is putting the US Government way ahead.
Could have it been handled better? Perhaps, but by in large, We The People will have a technically better television system as a result, and the US Treasury will have a lot more money that they didn't have before.
That doesn't sound like a big lose to me.
Well, how much did the US Government get from the recent auctions?
Guess where that spectrum is coming from? TV UHF Channels 52 through 59.
Just one block, the Class C block, netted the US Treasury $4.74 billion.
Trusting the US Government is about as stupid as trusting a website with a PO Box listed on the domain registration and no phone number or address on the Contact Us.. page.
While data for the last tax year isn't available, from 2000 the top 10% of all taxpayers paid 40.1% of the income tax paid to the Federal government, while those earning less than $20k a year represented around 5% of the total tax liability paid.
Even though the top 10% only represents 2.2% of all taxpayers, and those in the under 20% bracket represent over 30% of all taxpayers.
http://www.house.gov/jct/x-45-00.pdf
Now shut up.
Great, so you get back $20.
Meanwhile, they've pocketed $40 of taxpayer dollars.
I fail to see how this is a "lose" for the scammers.
No, it is a waste.
Instead of just implementing it as a tax credit (which wouldn't really cost much of anything), the US Government's Department of Commerce is spending millions to process applications, create an infrastructure to accept coupons (which are a form of electronic debit card), and to then put the money in retailer's hands.
It would have been cheaper for the US Government to buy a couple of million boxes, delay the cutover until 2010, and give them to the Census Bureau to distribute when they count the Census.
Whether or not the entire idea of giving people a converter box, as opposed to "letting the market sort it out" itself is another story, but one we'll leave for another generation.
Well, you do have to go through the kind-of clunky "are you a human?" intelligence test.
I ordered mine pretty much when the website went online, and got my coupons about three weeks ago.
Get the Zenith DTT900. It's about the best one on the market right now. The only feature it does not have is analog pass-thru, which is likely only required if you live somewhere with translators that aren't going digital (ie: the "boonies"). It's sold at RadioShack stores.
Sending out $40 coupons for a $50 converter, rather than just telling people to take $40 off their tax liability and submit a receipt sounds like a good starter.
You do know that you can go online and check the status of your converter coupon request, right?
It's not like http://dtv2009.gov/ doesn't have a HUGE graphic on the front page saying "Wondering where your coupon is?"
Problem. They have already "redeemed" the $40 coupons issued by the US Government, and it would appear that consumers are out the "money" (on both counts: the NTIA has paid the retailer, and the consumer doesn't get their $40 off the converter).
It seems doubly stupid, given the fact that a lot of people have had good luck with the Zenith converter being sold at your corner Radio Shack store.
So, let me get this straight.
You gave your credit card information to a company you've never heard of that has no contact information on their website that you did not validate?
Hahahahahahahahaha.
I agree that it is sloppy reporting.
However, you are missing the bigger point. It isn't _JUST_ a DTTB standard receiver. There's a whole network that China has installed to make it work.
Have you tried receiving ATSC signals while mobile? It sucks, mostly because the ATSC standard doesn't really handle multipath very well. The Chinese "mobile TV" system supposedly solves that problem by using low-power repeaters in a specific frequency band.
If it works, it is "cool", and something we don't have in the English-speaking world.
The Chinese device isn't just a simple tuner for conventional over-the-air broadcasts.
The Chinese government has built a micro-cellular style video distribution system on top of their conventional HDTV broadcast signals specifically designed for mobile reception. While the "receiver" mentioned is probably just a DSP (like you mention), it is not necessarily designed to receive conventional Chinese HDTV, but a special lower-power (and I assume higher frequency) broadcast designed for smaller screens.
Right.
So you use five 6 MHz QAM1024 signals (each one carrying 50 Mb/s) with a center of 6, 12, 18, 24, and 30 MHz. That still keeps you completely contained within HF, which was my point.
I don't know of anywhere in the world where television and cellular phones live below the VHF boundary.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be trying to work 40 meters anywhere near this hypothetical system.
QAM 1024 gives 50 Mb/s on a 6 Mhz channel. It would only take 35MHz will give you the bandwidth they're talking about.. and that's totally within the range typically used for BPL.
BPL typically uses frequencies much lower than where most TV broadcasting takes place, and is WAAAAY below the frequencies used by mobile phones.
As far as RF exposure goes, these are power lines. The power levels that BPL uses are way below the EMP emissions that are coming off the power lines as the result of.. oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that they are carrying alternating current oscillating at 50 or 60 Hertz?
Now, there is concern amongst users of HF and low-band VHF. Public safety, amateur, maritime, and some broadcast ('AM' [more accurately called "medium wave"] and short-wave) are all well within the frequency bands used by BPL, and in most of the first world these users are very vocal with their complaints.
"Stealing CPU cycles" was a valid argument when we were on 200 MHz Pentium chips.
Considering a "cheap" motherboard now has a dual-core CPU running at a minimum of 2 GHz, it would appear that for all but a tiny handful of applications there's more than enough CPU to go around.
I would gladly migrate the entire enterprise over to Free (either speech or beer) software tomorrow for every single business need - it would eliminate that worry at a stroke - but this is the real world and half-decent Free accounting and payroll applications are pretty thin on the ground.
Ernie Ball Co. had no problems figuring that out after getting stung by a $90,000 BSA audit.
It's all a matter of business priorities. If a small-to-medium-sized guitar string manufacturer can do it, I suspect most shops could figure it.
I was going to come in here and make this exact comment.
I can count on one finger the organizations I've worked for where shareware tools like WinZip were actually properly licensed. At one shop I worked at, I actually had the CFO (who also functioned as the CIO/CTO) say, in these exact words, "oh, nobody actually enforces that WinZip license.. you think the BSA is gonna come in here and bust our nuts over 100 unlicensed copies of WinZip? Get real!".
Three months after I left this company, the BSA came in, did a "software audit", and indeed busted their nuts over 100 unlicensed copies of WinZip (along with other licensing violations).
At the risk of sounding stupid, I'm wondering why people still buy soundcards. The vast majority of motherboards have some version of AC97 audio on them nowadays. Is there some inherent advantage to SoundBlaster cards over the AC97 audio bundled with most motherboards nowadays?
Is there something I'm missing?
This is also fairly standard.
Many switches open a data channel between the switch and Quantico. Telcos are required to deliver not only the voice, but details about the call including supervision status, digits dialed and collected, and even if the tapped phone goes on and off hook.
Typically, this "call detail" information is delivered via TCP/IP from the switch in question. My understanding is you cannot have any stateful packet inspection between your switch and the FBI, because of the potential for this to be compromised.
Because the FBI Academy in Quantico is the clearinghouse for the FBI for all CALEA wiretaps, and acts as a "one-stop shop" for carriers wishing to comply with the law.
Use the Goog. It's your friend.