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The Telecom Digest
Wednesday, December 28, 2022

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Copyright © 2022 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.
Volume 41 Table of Contents Issue 297
MMS switchoff in Germany and Switzerland
20 Years Later, TTB Agrees to Revisit Alcohol Labeling
FCC Bans Approval Of New Telecommunications Equipment For Entities On The Covered List
Ways That Vendors and Service Providers Blow You Off
Message-ID: <toeijm$3inbr$9@dont-email.me> Date: 27 Dec 2022 11:49:27 +0100 From: "Marco Moock" <mo01@posteo.de> Subject: MMS switchoff in Germany and Switzerland

Some cellular network providers will switch off MMS service in 2023 due to the low amount of users.

VendorShutoff Date
Vodafone17th Jan 2023
Deutsche Telekom (ex T-Mobile)31st Dec 2023
Swisscom (Switzerland)1st Jan 2023

O2/Telefonica doesn't plan to switch off MMS yet.

Message-ID: <tof233$3kjaa$1@dont-email.me> Date: 27 Dec 2022 10:13:40 -0500 From: Bill Horne <malassimQRMilation@gmail.com> Subject: 20 Years Later, TTB Agrees to Revisit Alcohol Labeling by Linda Goldstein , Daniel Kaufman , Amy Ralph Mudge and Randal M. Shaheen Watchdogs claim a win, but are they being set up for a wait? Again? Anticipation When last we left the doughty heroes of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, they had summoned up the gumption to sue the Treasury Department and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau under the Administrative Procedure Act, which, according to their complaint, "requires that an agency 'shall ... conclude a matter presented to it' 'within a reasonable time,' and the reviewing court 'shall ... compel agency action ... unreasonably delayed.'" The delay in this case was a doozy. https://www.mondaq.com/article/news/1264850?q=1803232&n=649&tp=2&tlk=2&lk=27 -- Bill Horne Moderator, The Telecom Digest
Message-ID: <tof2ba$3kjab$1@dont-email.me> Date: 27 Dec 2022 10:18:04 -0500 From: "Bill Horne" <malassimQRMilation@gmail.com> Subject: FCC Bans Approval Of New Telecommunications Equipment For Entities On The Covered List by Jing Zhang , Jennifer Parry , Ellen L. Aldin and Angela Giancarlo On November 25, the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or "the Commission") issued an order banning the authorization of new equipment sold by telecommunications companies regarding the Commission's Covered List (the "Order" or "FCC Order"). This decision bans the preliminary consideration, and ultimately the sale, of new telecommunications products in the US for companies on the Covered List. Several Chinese companies are already on the Covered List; the List includes "telecommunications equipment" from Huawei Technologies ("Huawei") and ZTE Corporation ("ZTE"), along with "video surveillance and telecommunications equipment" produced by Hytera Communications Corporation ("Hytera"), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company ("Hikvision"), or Dahua Technology Company ("Dahua"), among other device manufacturers. https://www.mondaq.com/article/news/1264968?q=1803232&n=649&tp=2&tlk=3&lk=28 -- Bill Horne Moderator, The Telecom Digest -- (Please remove QRM for direct replies)
Message-ID: <MWHPR22MB0253DA72BF2F61965829A261F5ED9@MWHPR22MB0253.namprd22.prod.outlook.com> Date: 27 Dec 2022 17:18:15 +0000 From: "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson@mishmash.com> Subject: [Telecom] Ways That Vendors and Service Providers Blow You Off Over my many years of interacting with different carriers, ISPs, hosting providers, vendors, manufacturers, etc., one thing I have noticed are the ways many [not all] of them blow their customers off. If they can't handle an issue or they don't want to, they will do or tell you one of the following things: 1. I am going to check it upstream. He / she has given up on fixing your service and wants to leave your premises without spending any significant time on it. 2. I will check it and get back to you. Of course, they never do. 3. I am going to transfer you to someone who can help you. They are transferring you back into their ACD queue, you have to wait for another agent, and he or she doesn't have a clue about how to help you either. In which case, you get transferred back into the queue yet again and again if you tolerate it. 4. Telephone company techs once told my mother that the reason her home phones were going dead periodically is because she was using MCI and MCI was the cause. There were two bare wires hanging loose off of an old 42A block and they were shorting together every time a piece of furniture was rolled up against it. They couldn't find a dead short? 5. It's not my fault. I didn't do this. They seem to forget that they represent their company. The customer will respect you more for owning the problem. Don't pass the responsibility off onto others. 6. I have been doing this for many years. There is nothing wrong with your service. But when I made a trip out to the customer premises, I found what the issue was and had it corrected. I have totally embarrassed technicians that way more than once. And there are more. Some of them are thinking that you don't know what you are talking about. Yet, I subsequently resolved the issue(s) essentially doing their jobs. When you are getting nowhere and ask to speak to a supervisor, they do everything in their power to prevent you from speaking to a supervisor. They tell you a supervisor will call you. But the supervisor never does call back. One CSR told me there was nothing wrong with my phone. It kept squawking 'voice command, please enter a command' at times that proved to be very embarrassing for me when I was in public. She refused to transfer me to a supervisor. I called back and canceled my service because refusing to let a customer speak to a supervisor if he or she so requests is unacceptable to me. I switched to another provider and the issue was resolved. Then, a supervisor called me and asked why I had canceled. I identified the CSR by name and told them what happened on the phone with her. He said he would look into it. But I was beyond them saving my account as I had been trying to resolve this issue for weeks with no resolution in sight. One ISP was delivering us only three hundred kbps. They kept leaving without fixing it. When I demanded action, a supervisor told us that they were making too many trips to our premises. I escalated to the county franchise people. This time, the ISP sent someone who knew what he was doing. It was corrected before he left the property that day. All he had to do was replace our defective cable modem box. We had six Mbps before he was finished [which at that time, was the service offering we were paying for]. They should have been able to fix it with one trip and they were blaming us [for their own incompetence]? And there is the 'Swap It Out' syndrome. When you call their 'technical support' line and describe your issue, there is only one solution: Swap it out! Ship him or her a new one and let them send the old one back. Time and money are lost and there is unnecessary frustration to their customer. Sometimes swapping it out is the solution. Sometimes not. You should not resort to swapping it out until other avenues are exhausted. I would always take a 'failure is not an option' attitude. Our customers had a lot of faith in my ability to resolve their issues because I always did solve them and I did it quickly. I wish more companies would adopt this attitude. It would save a lot of customer pain, customer loss, and overall frustration. I have been on the user end and the technician end of problems of these kinds. I share customer frustration in their inability to properly support those they serve. In a position where I regularly served troubled customers, I could bet a hundred dollar bill [with no fear of losing] that the customer was ready to eat me alive when I walked in that door. But I always had them eating out of my hand when I left. It's a high standard to achieve. But your customers will respect your company more if your people meet it. That makes for better sales, more 'word of mouth' referrals, and overall customer satisfaction. Quality isn't one of the issues. Quality is the issue. When you solve your quality problems, the other 'issues' fall into place pretty quickly. Happy customers make for peaceful operation. Try it. You will like it.
End of telecom Digest Wed, 28 Dec 2022
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