T-Mobile has allegedly misrepresents its "Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery (RPTR) Fee" as a required federal government charge for two decades; this monthly "hidden" fee, $3.49 per line, is disclaimed in the "Government Taxes and Fees"
section. A recent class action lawsuit filed against T-Mobile alleges
the company has been charging this deceptive RPTR fee to its post-paid wireless customers, while misrepresenting it as charge handed down by the federal government. T-Mobile has made up this fee to increase T-Mobile’s revenue.
Verizon charges a one-time surcharge for each device added to the monthly cell phone bill, two extra fees - the first monthly payment,
and the next billing period -, a one-time activation fee for each device, a fee for the upgrade, a fee for Verizon Cloud or Apple Music, a late fee if the past-due balance surpasses $7 or $10, a $10 fee if a payment is made in advance,
and a $2.99 fee if paying the bill at a CVS or a 7-Eleven store, and several more fees.
5G speeds ranges from around 50 Mbps to 1,000 Mbps (1 Gbps) depending on the RF channel and base station load.
Faster speeds require use of the mmWave bands, reaching 4 Gbps with carrier aggregation and MIMO, assuming a perfect channel and no other base station load.
Sub-6 GHz 5G (mid-band), by far the most common, can deliver between 10 and 1,000 Mbps; it will have a much further reach than mmWave bands. In the sub-6 bands, C-Band (n77/n78) was deployed by various
U.S. operators in 2022.
T-Mobile US was the 1st company in the world to launch a commercially available 5G NR Standalone network. Altiostar, Cisco Systems, Datang Telecom/Fiberhome, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, and ZTE were the first companies sold 5G radio
hardware and 5G systems for carriers
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e.,
for telegraphy which is widely considered to be a forerunner of the modern telephone. Telegraph dates only from 1832 when Pavel Schilling invented one of the earliest electrical
telegraphs. A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code (or a
printing telegraph operator using plain text) was known as a telegram.
A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to "cable" or "wire". Later, a Telex was a message sent by a
Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network.
A wirephoto or wire picture was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph.
At the end of 2019, ITU estimated that 53.6 percent of the global population, or 4.1 billion people, are using the Internet, reflecting a 5.3 percent increase compared with 2018.
Between 2005 and 2019, the number of Internet users grew on average by 10 percent every year.
As of December 2017 according to a report by the U.S. Center for Disease Control National Health Information Survey (NHIS), about 42.8% of American families still use a landline phone.
More than one-half of American homes (53.9%) had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) an increase of 3.1 percentage points since 2016.
More than 70% of adults aged 25-34 and adults renting their homes were living in wireless-only households. Approximately 3.2% of households had no telephone service (neither wireless nor landline)
By end 2016, 3.9 billion people - 53% of the world’s population – is not using the Internet. In the Americas and the CIS regions, about one third of the population is offline. While almost 75% of people in Africa are non-users,
only 21% of Europeans are offline. In Asia and the Pacific and the Arab States, the percentage of the population that is not using the Internet is very similar: 58.1 and 58.4%, respectively.
- (CIS: Commonwealth of Independent State or Russian Commonwealth: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan)
The world's most popular phone is the Nokia 1100, a basic GSMmobile phone; over 250 million 1100s have been sold since its launch in late 2003.
The Nokia 1100 was designed at Nokia Design Center in California and patented for the US by the Bulgarian-American designerDimitre Mehandjiysky.
The most common use for a mobile is neither calling nor texting but checking the time.
In Japan, 90% of mobile phones are waterproof.
Malaysia allows you to legally divorce your partner via text message.
More than 200 million Apple users are running the new iOS 7 on their iPhones and iPads, and that more than 11 million unique listeners already tuned in to iTunes Radio in the first five days after it went live.
Apple took 21 days to sell 10 million iPhone 5s; Samsung took 50 days to sell 10 million Galaxy S IIIs
As of 3/2013 Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a 56% market share for Internet browsers on personal computers, Mozilla's Firefox has a 20% share and Google's Chrome has 17%.
Apple sold about 250 million iPhones before iPhone 6 waa released.
About 145.8 million iPhones were sold before iPhone 5 was released (9/21/2012).
Apple sold 125 million iPhones, 58.31 million iPads, 35.16 million iPods and 18.15 million Macs in 2012.
Around 75% of iPhone users slept with their iPhone next to them in bed, and 94% confessed to having a certain level of addiction to their iPhone.
Apple paid 1 million dollars for iPhone.com in 2007 and 4.5 million dollars for iCloud.com in 2011.
Apple has sold 55 million iPads since it was launched in 2010.
Around 1.7 million iPhone 4 devices were sold in the first 3 days after its availability.
Over 1 million iPhone 3GS devices were sold in the first week after its availability.
There are over 300,000 iPhone applications available in the Apple shop, and there were over 7 billion downloads as of May 2011.
Apple spent at least 150 million dollars to build iPhone, and filed over 200 iPhone patent applications in the U.S alone.
The number of telephone subscribers in China is 863,000,000 (as of 2/2011), 771,181,357 (as of 1/2011) in India, 292,847,098 (as of 6/2010) in the U.S., 213,900,000 (as of 6/2010) and 205,100,000 (as of 1/2011) in Brazil.
In a complaint filed in December 2009, Nokia asked the International Trade Commission to bar the importation of Apple devices that infringe Nokia patents.
These include iPhones, iPod Touch, and iPod Classic portable music players, as well as the iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Mac Book, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air computers.
On 3/25/2011 Apple won a round in its patent fight with Nokia; a trade panel judge ruled that the U.S. company did not violate any of five Nokia patents.
Cisco predicted that 66% of world’s mobile traffic will be Video by 2014. Middle East & Africa will have highest growth in mobile traffic (CAGR 133%),
followed by Asia-Pacific (119%) & North America ( 117%).
Smartphone sales surpassed worldwide PC sales in 2011
In July 2010, the number of mobile service subscribers in Hong Kong was boosted to 13.02 million, representing one of the highest penetration rates in the world at about
184 per cent. Among these 13.02 million subscribers, 4.64 million were 3G/3.5G service customers.
In 2009, 57% of Americans watched TV and surfed the Internet simultaneously.
In 2009, top-five best-selling smartphones is: RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models), Apple iPhone 3G (all models), RIM BlackBerry Storm, RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip), and T-Mobile G1.
58% of Americans have a mobile phone with Web connectivity; 21% own a smartphone, 8% own an iPhone (TM), and 29% own another type of Web-enabled phone.
30% of iPhone 3G buyers switched to AT&T from other carriers in 2008.
75% of mobile phones were manufactured in China.
Prepaid calling cards are a low cost solution to making international long distance phone calls.
Unwanted calls – including illegal and spoofed robocalls - are the FCC's top consumer complaint and their top consumer protection priority. Most unwanted calls are made from Robocalls, which are calls
made with an autodialer or that contain a message made with a prerecorded or artificial voice.
Federal Communication Commission (FCC) data shows that the number of complaints about unwanted calls, including robocalls and telemarketing calls, has fluctuated
somewhat over the past few years, with 172,000 complaints in calendar year 2015, 150,000 complaints in 2016, 185,000 complaints in 2017, and 232,000 complaints in 2018.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has brought 140 enforcement actions against companies and telemarketers for abandoned call, robocall and Do Not Call Registry
violations. As of December 2018, 121 of these FTC enforcement actions have been resolved, and in those cases the agency has recovered over $50 million in civil penalties
and $71 million in redress or disgorgement.
If you answer the phone and hear a recorded message instead of a live person, it's a robocall. If you’re getting a lot of robocalls trying to sell you something,
odds are the calls are illegal. Many are also probably scams.
Robocalls often seek personal information, or credit card or banking information. They may also attempt to acquire certain phrases or words,
such as questions that will elicit a “Yes” response, to ultimately use your voice and words to authorize charges on a bill or a stolen credit card.
Robocalls may pose as authoritative organizations, such as the DMV, IRS, or Social Security Administration. These calls may announce that a free
trip has been won, or that money is owed to the government, or that a donation to a charity is being solicited. Some calls prey on topical subjects such as national tragedies or tax season.
Robocalls may employ “neighbor spoofing,” which makes calls appear to come from a recipient’s area code.
When the phone rings, you may not have enough information to determone whether the call is wanted, unwanted, or illegal. The phone may display Caller ID and possibly a label from their voice service
provider or a third-party application. But Caller ID may be spoofed or blocked, and labelers may not have complete information about the calling party. Currently, the only certain way to
determine whether a call is wanted or unwanted is to answer it or let it go to voicemail, and hope the caller leaves a message.
You can take the following steps to avoid being victimized by robocalls:
Register your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry at donotcall.gov or 1-888-382-1222. This will take effect within a month.
If you received an unwanted call after your number was on the National Registry for 31 days, report it to the FTC.
Note that after your phone numbers are registered, some other types of organizations, such as charities, political groups, debt collectors and surveys, may still call you.
Install robocall-blocking applications (e.g.; Truecaller, RoboKiller, Mr. Number, Nomorobo, Hiya and YouMail) on your smart phone. Many phone carriers, such as
AT&T
,
T-Mobile,
Sprint,
Cox, and
Comcast,
often have free services available to reduce unwanted and anonymous calls.
There are a number of steps to reduce to be a victim of unwanted call or robotcalls:
If a caller claims to be an authority, such as a debt collector, student loan office, or bank, hang up and directly call the office to see if they actually need something.
Regularly check your banking, credit card, phone, and cable statements for unfamiliar charges. Dispute anything that you didn’t authorize, and demand proof if they claim you
were recorded approving the charge. You can also contact the Federal Trade Commission to dispute charges.
1951 - First long distance phone call without directory assistance was implemented.
1968 - First 911 system was introduced in the United States.
1970s - Protocols for local area networks (LANs) were successfully developed.
1971 - The first commercially viable answering machine debuts.
1973 - The first mobile call was made by Martin Cooper.
1973 - Experiments with VoIP begin. A major development that started in 2004 was the introduction of mass-market VoIP services that utilize existing broadband Internet access,
by which subscribers place and receive telephone calls in much the same manner as they would via the public switched telephone network (PSTN)
1993 - The world’s first Smartphone, Simon (with a LCD touch screen display) designed by IBM, was debuted at Florida’s Wireless World Conference by BellSouth Cellular, priced at $899.99.
Many countries' public telephone networks have a single emergency
telephone number that allows a caller to contact local emergency
services for assistance.
The emergency telephone number differs from country to country
It is typically a three-digit number (though not always). Some countries
have a different emergency number for each of the different emergency services.
