Cell phones on planes ... this could be an actual conversation

Goodbye, Peace And Quiet: Hello, Phone Calls On Planes?

Window seat 737 row 8: Cell phone passenger # 1: [speaking loudly]: "I'm on a plane!"

Middle seat: Cell phone passenger # 2: [speaking loudly]: "Speak up! The guy next to me is shouting into his phone!"

Row seat [women with baby]: Cell phone passenger # 3: [speaking loudly]: "The guy shouting next to me woke up the baby! I can't hear you!"

Row seat: Cell phone passenger # 4: [speaking even louder]: "There's a screaming baby in my ear! Can't hear you!"

Comment: I would rather have snakes on a plane!

NTSB Urges Cellphone Ban for Drivers

NTSB Urges Cellphone Ban for Drivers

Excerpt:

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that it had voted to recommend the ban on the use of mobile devices by drivers, citing what it said were the risks of distracted driving.

The recommended ban applies to hands-free devices, a recommendation that goes further than any state law to date. The agency said it is recommending that drivers be allowed to use their phones for emergency purposes.

“No call, no text, no update is worth a human life,” said Deborah A. P. Hersman, chairman of the N.T.S.B., an independent federal agency that is responsible for promoting traffic safety and investigating accidents and their causes. It will be up to the states to decide whether they want to follow the agency’s recommendation.

She said the decision was a hard one because such a ban would be unpopular among some people. But she said its time had come, given what she said were growing distractions in the car and the spread of increasingly powerful mobile devices.

“This is a difficult recommendation, but it’s the right recommendation and it’s time,” she said.

Comment: Should be the law!

Ever heard of Nanpa?

Wrong Number? Blame Companies' Recycling

Excerpt:

Almost 37 million phone numbers get recycled each year, a 16% increase since 2007, according to the most recent figures from the Federal Communications Commission. That means with more and more people going cellular, it is increasingly common to get calls intended for previous subscribers.

It's mostly because of a quirky bureaucratic process designed to stave off the day when the nation runs out of 10-digit phone numbers.

On the second floor of a building in Sterling, Va., is a little-known, administrative body called the North American Numbering Plan Administration (Nanpa). This group of 12 people oversees the nation's phone numbers.

Until 2002, Nanpa issued carriers 10,000-number blocks. But as mobile-phone use became pervasive, carriers quickly snapped up more blocks, accelerating the race toward what the industry calls "number exhaustion"—the day when every possible number is taken. Now, Nanpa doles out numbers in blocks of 1,000, and telecommunications experts estimate North America won't run out of phone numbers until 2040. (There's no plan yet for what happens after that, though Nanpa says it's studying options.)

Nanpa releases as many as 30 million never-before-used numbers each year, but carriers can only get them after they have assigned 75% of their inventory and are six months away from exhausting their supply. As a result, many carriers end up assigning recycled numbers before the standard waiting period (90 days for personal numbers, one year for businesses) has passed.

"The one constant among all the innovation in telecom is the numbering plan," says Nanpa Senior Director John Manning, a tall, graying baby boomer and former switch engineer who spends many Friday nights announcing high school football games. "It's used the same way today as it was in the 1950s."

As the number of recycled numbers has grown, it has generated some high-profile cases of mistaken phone identity. National Guard Sgt. Craig McComsey was answering calls from people asking for A C Wharton, the mayor of Memphis. And for a while, rapper Lil' Jon received texts from friends of teen sensation Miley Cyrus after he inherited her old phone number.

Since Nanpa is largely anonymous, phone carriers are stuck fielding complaints when overlaps occur. Scott Freiermuth, government affairs counsel at Sprint Nextel, says that it is the carriers' responsibility to iron out problems involving recycled numbers. Subscribers can ask carriers for a different number, but since the numbers are computer-generated, the carriers say they have no way of determining whether a "new" number is actually a recently recycled one.

Complicating the numbers crunch: The demand for certain area codes has outstripped supply.

"Phone numbers have taken on a social connotation that people want to retain," says Lisa Hook, CEO of Neustar, the company that holds the federal contract to operate Nanpa. Even Ms. Hook, who lives in Washington, D.C., has kept her 212 (New York) and 415 (San Francisco) phone numbers, saying a bicoastal identity is much more appealing than a number that screams that she works in the nation's capital.

Comment: Phone number recycling was the subject of a Seinfeld episode

About those "bars"

Apple Acknowledges Flaw in iPhone Signal Meter

Excerpts:

Apple Inc. said Friday that it was ''stunned'' to find that its iPhones have for years been using a ''totally wrong'' formula to determine how many bars of signal strength they are getting.

Apple said that's the reason behind widespread complaints from users that the latest model, iPhone 4, can show a sudden plunge in signal strength when they hold it in a way that covers a small black strip on one edge of the phone. Users online have jokingly called this the ''death grip'' for the phone.

That drop seems exaggerated because the phone can wrongly display four or five bars of signal strength when it shouldn't, Apple said.

''Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place,'' the company said in a letter to users.

.... It maintains that iPhone 4's wireless performance is better than previous models. And it said the incorrect signal-strength formula existed in the original iPhone, launched in 2007.

....

''We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see,'' Apple said.

Comment: Hard to believe .... "incorrect signal-strength formula ... [since] ... 2007"

Taxing company cell phones as a "fringe benefit"

Tax Man's Target: The Mobile Phone

Excerpt:

The use of company-issued mobile phones could trigger new federal income taxes on millions of Americans as a "fringe benefit," spurring efforts by the wireless industry and others to kill the idea.

The Internal Revenue Service proposed employers assign 25% of an employee's annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit. Under that scenario, a worker in the 28% tax bracket, whose wireless device costs the company $1,500 a year, could see $105 in additional federal income tax.

Comment: Would impact both K and I as we have company paid cell phones. Sounds like a great benefit but it means we could be called any time of day or night (and we sometimes are!)