Re: (PM) New Lucent software

Jay Hennigan (jay@west.net)
Fri, 14 May 1999 06:58:25 -0700 (PDT)

At 12:41 AM 5/14/99 -0700, Doug Hardie wrote:
>I have a user who sent me the following:
>
>> Lucent recently announced some new software
>>which allows one to use one's phone line for access to the internet and
>>also to
>> take or make phone calls at the same time. It is however, server side
>> software, i.e. it needs to be installed by the ISP.
>
>Any ideas what he is referring to?

Our GTE rep recently tried to pitch us on a service called "Internet Call
Waiting", where if you were online and got a voice call a message box (ICQ
or AOL-IM style) would pop up on your screen announcing the calling name
and number, and you could select to drop the net connection to take the
call. Nice idea, but the costs of the required Caller ID, Call Forward,
Call Waiting, and Internet Call Waiting to the customer are much higher
than the cost of a second phone line.

GTE was bragging about what seemed to be a phenomenally high penetration
of customers ordering this in some area. I'm wondering about a possible
correlation between high penetration of customers who buy this with poor
math scores on standardized tests.

Seems to me that Lucent Portmasters were mentioned as part of the equation
for the thing to work. 

-- 
--        Jay Hennigan     jay@west.net    805-884-6323          --  
WestNet:  Internet service to Santa Barbara, Ventura and the world.




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