Along with the usual cruise come-ons and life-insurance offers, my
daily mail brought a letter from Megacorp.

They got right to the point: big, 26 point type -

3G CDMA network retirement.
The time to upgrade is now.

Thank you for being a loyal Megacorp customer. We have been
actively decommissioning our 3G CDMA network, and expect this to
be completed no later than December 31, 2022. On Januar 1, 2023,
Megacorp 3G CDMA devices and 4G devices that do not support HD
Voice (Non-VoLTE) will not be able to send or receive calls,
send or receive text messages, or use data services.

Some of the popular impacted devices include:

* 3G CDMA basic phones and smartphones
* 4G LTE smartphones that do not support HD Voice
* 3G CDMA-connected devices
* 3G CDMA tablets and mobile broadband/Hotspot devices
* 3G DCMA network extenders

And then, in case we backwoods hicks didn't get the point, this
oh-so-sincere sales pitch follows ...

We want you to stay connected and have the best experience
possible. Your mobile numbere(s) ending in the following four
digits will be impacted: xxxx. Please upgrade your device(s)
before December 31, 2022. To get started, sign in to your My
Megacorp account, visit a local Megacorp store or contact us at
800-xxx-xxxx to discuss your new device options. Or view special
upgrade offers at www.website.invalid/upgrade3g.

[snip]

We will continue to remind you until you upgrade to a compatible
4G LTE/5G device.

(Do not attempt to adjust your attitude. Do not attempt to raise your
expectations. *WE* will control your attitude! *WE* will tell you what
your expectations are to be!)

So, there we have it: buy a new cellular phone or do without the
"benefits" it brings - such as seeing your insurance rates skyrocket
as the copper-based POTS lines that made U.S. phone service the envy
of the rest of the world are replaced by maybe-on, maybe-not cellular
phones. Benefits such as having multinational corporations aware of your
movements second-by-second, or which store display you paused at for
the longest time, or which web site you visit most often and when.

The list continues: the sell-u-lar salesmen are drooling at the
thought of being able to sell your life's habits, your religious
beliefs, your club memberships, and (above all) the names of your
friends. Their greed extends to forcing you to see your children made
fun of for not having "the" new device that a professonal "influencer"
touted during school hours and on school grounds, and they are
determined, with lots of help from the best Congress money can buy, to
convince you that you are expected to fork over hundreds of dollars
every year, forever, to enrich a group of people who think that not
being caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth.

I swam in the belly of that beast for twenty-five years. I had the
privilege of seeing - indeed, of being a part of - the end of the
electromechical age in American industry. I'm not going to claim that
the Panel or #5 Crossbar or #1ESS switches that I worked around were
the ne plus ultra of the telephone world - but they worked, reliably,
year after year, without needing hype to convince their users that
they could rely on them, without needing PR to tell us how great they
were, and without forcing customers to buy a new telephone instrument
every time the executives' stock options started to drop in value.

This used to be the only country in the world where ordinary citizens
would pick up the handset of an ordinary phone, and dial without
bothering to listen for a dial tone. It was always there: it always
worked.

No longer.

The cellular network in Boston, Massachusetts, stopped working for
three hours or more after the bombing at the Boston marathon. It
wasn't broken - just overloaded.

Now, we see what those in power think of our safety and our opinions -
so little that what used to be a reliable, always-on government and
government-oversight communications network is allowed to fail after
Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) killed, wounded, and maimed those
attending a public gathering in the city which was the political heart
of our revolution.

Don't be concerned about emergency communications, by the way: the
reliable POTS phone lines are being replaced by special-purpose
"shadow" cellular networks that substitute massive expenditures and
complexity for the reliability we used to get by using simpler, less
expensive, and longer-lasting designs that didn't make enough money
for the new, improved, virtual ruling class. You might have to wait an
hour or two for an ambulance, while you or your family lie bleeding
and helpless, but rest assured that those in the upper crust will
always be able to reschedule their appointments with their mistresses
in order to spend time comforting the common herd.

There is a solution other than opening our wallets and letting that old
whore Mother Bell take whatever she wants: it's easy to do, takes less
than an hour, and can have an amazine effect during an election year.

Pick up a pen, and some paper, and write a letter to your Congressman
(and to your Senator if (s)he is up for reelection). Tell them this
electronic land grab is wrong, and that your vote will follow the
candidate who promises to actually do something to stop this
theft-via-fountain-pen.

Bill

P.S. N.B.: It *MUST* be a hand-written letter! My Grandfather served
in the Massachusetts Legislature for most of his life, and he told me
again and again that the only letters he or the other Representatives
ever paid attention to were written by hand and mailed the same
way. If you haven't mailed a letter in a while, the post office still
sells pre-stamped envelopes in both personal and business sizes, for a
few cents more than the cost of the postage. You can copy your
Representative's address from your letter and write it on the envelope
while still in the post office.

--
Bill Horne
Telecom Digest Moderator
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)