Telephone social networks are quite small: I recently sat down at an SQL terminal with several hundred billion call records behind it. With a simple SQL query, I determined how many distinct people the average American telephones more than once in a given month (answer: five). Facebook users average 130 “friends”. Telephone social networks are … Continue reading telephone social networks
Plain-old, fixed-line telephone service is shrinking rapidly. Consider US West, which became Qwest in 2000. It is a large local exchange telephone company (a former regional Bell Operating Company) serving the northwestern and mid-western U.S. US West – Qwest’s fixed-line residential and business switched-access telephone lines grew 3.3% and 6.0% per year, respectively, from 1991 … Continue reading trends in categories of fixed-line telephone service
A quantitative indicator of telephone service’s importance to the economy is the volume of toll-free calls. These calls are typically made from an individual to an organization that provides services to individuals across a wide geographic area. Offering toll-free calling encourages individuals to call and emphasizes a company’s willingness to provide services. In the U.S. … Continue reading telephone service's broad economic importance
Thanks to Aaron Logan for the image of the red phone booth.
Device design is a significant problem for a show-and-tell communicator. Designing a “phone” that integrates talking and showing would be a useful project for a design school class. Re-describing features is less costly than redesigning devices. Speaker phones are used for long, boring meetings. But a social mode is just what teenagers need. That’s right … Continue reading Not on speaker phone, on social mode!