From: telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org   
      
   When Verizon announced that they were buying TracFone, I happened to be   
   in need of a phone. My wife had lost hers, and she drives for "Meals on   
   wheels" once a week, so I gave her the one that my Sister-in-law had   
   given to me: a 4G smartphone that was already set up on a Verizon post   
   pay plan.   
      
   I was in Walmart a couple of days later, and although they didn't have   
   any TracFone packages on the shelves, they were featuring a "Verizon"   
   prepaid offering, including a "flip" phone, for $35/month, with $5 off   
   each bill if I paid with an automatic debit from my bank card. It   
   sounded good to me: my cellular needs have always been modest, even   
   before I retired, and I thought that $30 per month would serve me very   
   well, especially since the "smart" phone was costing me over $70 on each   
   bill, with it's postpaid plan.   
      
   The phone came with the box: an off-brand unit made in China. I set up   
   the account, agreed to the monthly debit, and turned it on, and ...   
      
   Nothing, Nada, zip. It didn't work. No talk, no text. My old phone was   
   still working fine, and I used it to ring up Verizon. After several   
   waypoints, I arrived at a tech-support person that knew the phone I was   
   trying to put in service. She told me to throw it in the trash and wait   
   for a new one she'd send me.   
      
   I did. She did too. The mail lady brought me another display box,   
   complete with plastic hanger, and it had another off-brand phone made   
   in China: the box was labelled "Orbic Journey." It sort-of worked for   
   a few weeks.   
      
   Then, problems appeared, and nobody at Verizon knows how to fix them:   
      
    1. The keypad isn't usable with Verizon's voice-mail or other   
       Touch-Tone response systems. Pushing a key for the first time   
       generates a short - in face, very short - tone burst, which (for   
       example) the voice-mail system ignores. If I want to delete a   
       message, I have to push "7" twice, with the first key-press serving   
       to get past the short beep, and the second serving to actually get   
       through to the Touch-Tone decoder. That's bad enough by itself, but   
       it gets worse: the behavior is erratic, and sometimes I  delete a   
       message with one key-press, and the second push of the button   
       deletes the NEXT message. The voicemail system usually accepts my   
       password without any double taps, but the rest of the time, it's a   
       (very irritating) guessing game to find out what each key-press will   
       do. It's not just Verizon's Voicemail: the defect shows up whenever   
       I try to send Touch-Tone codes to any auto-attendant system.   
      
    2. The phone speaker port is on the bottom of the flat-bottomed case,   
       so it's very hard to hear the ringing, even though the ringer   
       volume is turned up to seven, which is as high as it will go. If   
       the screen is visible, the only way to hear the ringing is by   
       putting a pencil under it when you put it down.   
      
    3. The menus are cryptic and VERY hard to back out of. There is no   
       "home" button or other "Go back" choice.   
      
   The only reason I can think of for Verizon to put such a phone out   
   under their name is to use it as a bait-and-switch invitation, and   
   here are the possibilities as I see them:   
      
   Verizon will cut off all the "Lifeline" accounts on TracFone, and...   
      
    1. Offer Orbic phones and their own prepaid service as a substitute.   
       and then entice seniors into some more profitable version of   
       "Lifeline" service, or,   
      
   2.  Offer "family" Lifeline plans with the hope of shaming the   
       relatives of current Lifeline users into paying a lot more to keep   
       in touch with Grandma, or.   
      
   3.  Verizon will lobby to have Lifeline relegated to an "As available"   
       tier of 5G VoIP service, with 911 calls forced to wait for   
       more profitable corporate traffic.   
      
   Well, my Crystal Ball is as cloudy as anyone else's, so I'll just leave   
   you with this anecdote - when I graduated from Programmer Basic   
   Training, I was selected to attend the Initial Corporate Development   
   Program a.k.a. "ICDP." It was a prep school for those whom had showed   
   unusual promise, and I worked very hard to show that I deserved the   
   honor. My ICDP group invited the owner of a COCOT (Customer Owned Coin   
   Operated Telephone) company to come and talk to us about the industry   
   and the future.   
      
   After we had talked for almost an hour, I asked our visitor to tell us   
   what he thought was our company's most important skill: what we, as a   
   company, did better than anyone else.   
      
   He picked up his coat, opened the door, and then turned around and said   
   "You're very good at hiding what you really want."   
      
   Bill Horne   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)