first post
the new york times references arthur c. clarke's 2061: odyssey three in an article about the growing number of flat-rate local and long distance phone service plans. if that sounds familiar, it’s because i made the same reference on april 16, 2002 when i first heard about mci’s flat-rate plan. (of course, clarke was talking about flat-rate international calling, and that is probably still at least a decade or so off in the future.)
even local not-so-baby bell sbc has gotten in to the game.
(there’s also a point about the case against micropayments to be made here, but i’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)
Comments
A decade? I think flat rate international calling will be common in a decade. Not universal, but many of us will use VoIP by then.
- ask (running his answering machine on Linux)
ah yes, voip. i hadn't even considered that. but i'm not sure how much it would change my estimate—adoption of technology within the telecom space is painfully slow. is anybody even offering global flat-rate service over voip right now?
but it could turn out that voip is such a great deal in the business space that it drives the technology fast enough for residential adoption to be quick. but quick enough for residential flat-rate voip-based international calling to be where residential flat-rate non-voip domestic calling is today?
i used a linux box as my answering machine for a while, but now that i don't have a 24×7 linux box at home, i just go without any sort of answering machine.
Add a comment
Sorry, comments on this post are closed.
just those NYTimes hacks at it again.