According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the federal hotline set up to hear calls relating to the mandatory DTV transition has had over 700,000 calls since Friday morning, the day the analog signals were cut off.
200,000 of the calls were related to the federal coupons towards digital converter boxes, perhaps implying a significant amount of people still do not have the right equipment to receive digital signals.
Another 200,000 calls were from consumers who have the boxes but were confused on how to operate them successfully. The FCC told many to “re-scan the airwaves for digital frequencies,” and says 99 percent of the problems were solved.
Many others called about problems with reception, which is a much deeper problem than simple converter box issues.
“Our job is far from over,” said FCC Chairman Michael Copps. “This transition is not a one-day affair. We have known about re-scanning and reception issues for some time and have been doing our best to get the word out.”
The most callers came from the Chicago, Illinois area, but significant calls came from Dallas, New York, Philadelphis and Baltimore as well.
The Commerce Department recently reported they had sent out coupons for over 60 million converter boxes, but were still receiving over 100,000 requests a day, even during the last week. Research firm SmithGeiger LLC says there are probably still over 2 million households which are not prepared, despite repeated warnings and a full marketing campaign by the government. The most likely groups to not be prepared? Minorities, people over 65, and people under the age of 35.
Result for: signals
When Steve Jobs first demonstrated the iPhone 3G at last year’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference he bragged about the speed of its internet connection. Since then AT&T seems determined to stop people from using very much of that supposedly plentiful bandwidth for anything more than loading web pages or reading email.
Now AT&T officials find themselves on the defensive after the release of the iPhone SlingPlayer, which is only able to use the phone’s Wi-Fi connection.
AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel told Macworld it would be a violation of the company’s terms of service for a program to stream video across their 3G network. He said “It’s about making sure all our customers have access to the wireless network,”
He claims it falls under the category of “redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers” which is indeed prohibited under the TOS language, as is any use that causes “extreme network capacity issues and interference with the network.”
Siegel suggested that those who want to use the SlingPlayer for iPhone or any other mobile platform such as Symbian or Blackberry should take advantage of the company’s Wi-Fi hotspots instead.
Result for: signals
Calls made using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology generally cost the caller less than traditional phone calls. For this reason, many of the major carriers within the European Union have outright banned VoIP use on their networks, viewing it as a potentially devastating threat to their revenues.
However, there are some signals from the European Union that they will be forced to change their stance. As things currently stand, individual EU member states regulate blocked Internet services, but EU telecom commissioner Viviane Reding recently commented that action must be taken against carriers that use their large marker share to “block innovative services.”
A report published in Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper claims that the European Union has already prepared draft legislation that would open all smartphones used within the bloc to VoIP services.
