Re: Goodbye to copper? [Telecom]

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:20:23 -0400, Robert Neville wrote:

David Clayton <dcstar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I constantly have a chuckle at the dialling plan hoops you
people in North America constantly have to jump through because of the
(to me) seemingly irrational embrace the NANP has you in.

In Australia we recently (well, quite a few years ago) all went to 8
digit local numbers, and despite all the whining of people who resisted
it (some bitterly) it is now accepted with no apparent problems
whatsoever - and its aims of eliminating any geographic number shortages
now and in the future have been achieved.

No offence to Australia - it's one of my favorite countries - it's not
irrational, there's a scale factor problem here. The number of devices
in the US with an embedded 10 digit phone number capability that assumes
a 7 digit local number exceeds those in Australia by at least an order
of magnitude.

Overall quantity isn't really relevant unless the per-capita use is
somehow significantly greater, it basically costs each person/company in a
country 10% the size of another the same amount to achieve the same thing.

The cost of swapping out or otherwise upgrading all the older ATMs,
private PBXes, fax machines, devices with backup modems, alarm systems
and who knows what else makes a number plan change quite expensive.

Versus the costs of not doing it?

Add to that the investment in stationery changes and general mass
confusion and there'd probably be a mass revolt. Given how difficult
people found the recent DTV switch, I can't imagine what they'd do with
an 8 digit phone number.

Again, a person is a person and despite all the arguments along these
lines, many (many) other countries have managed such a change without too
much trouble at all - certainly far less trouble than the opponents of
theses things said would occur.

Unless North American citizens are - as a group - particularly stupid in
comparison to all these other people, there is a very high probability
that they will cope with little trouble at all.

As far as the "stationery changes" argument goes, experience shows that
the changeover period of any of these situations gives more than
sufficient time for old stock to be used up as new stationery is produced
with the new details.

There have been numerous precedents for mass changes in all sorts of areas
(unleaded petrol, as another example) that people have coped with. The
same old arguments seem to appear for every sort of change like this but
history also seems to show that all the issues can be overcome or they
aren't really as big an obstacle than they are made out to be.

People seem to have an overly irrational fear of change, but it seems that
they don't give themselves near enough credit for their proven abilities
to cope with such change (which they really should be quite proud of). I
don't quite understand why this is so, but I suspect that those with a
vested interest in the status quo have been quiet successful in implanting
the proverbial "FUD" over any change in our minds.

--
Regards, David.

David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.

.

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