The Graceful and Ungraceful Evolution Away from POTS

The underlying communications technology doesn’t matter so long as it works as needed when needed.
As much as I hate to admit it, and despite the fact that I rely on and love my low-tech, old time hardwired copper lines (yes, I still have two in my house), POTS lines are going the way of the dodo bird. Although, contrary to what the fearmongers would have you believe, this transition is not happening all at once, but slow and often sloth-like pace. Is it likely that copper will totally disappear? No. But as technology evolves and existing infrastructure becomes difficult and costly to maintain, POTS offerings will be harder to come by and costlier to repair, forcing many to abandon it, despite its inherent strengths of power failure operation and accuracy of location information.

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How to Deploy Contact Center AI Ethically, Responsibly

Are you using contact center AI to validate already established conclusions, or are you actually using it to analyze and improve the customer experience?
A long time ago, my first real post-college job was at a call center for a major bank. An automatic call distribution (ACD) assigned calls to a group of about 20 agents who handled credit card, auto loan, and mortgage information. Once a month, each agent would sit down with the manager and receive a ranking. Every month, the same rather dim-witted agent (let’s call her Agent #1) would finish first, while the agent who finished second was clearly smarter (let’s call her Agent #2) than everyone else in the room. But Agent #2, the smart one, always finished second. This was a mystery to us who cared, particularly as Agent #1 received bonuses and awards for her continued place at the top.

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VR & Metaverse Ethics: It’s All About the Data

How enterprises gather and use personal information like biometrics will be key to using VR and metaverse technologies ethically.
AI is becoming increasingly present in our daily lives. From the way you interact with an airline’s web service to the way you are treated at your local fast-food behemoth and solicited (some might even say “bribed”) for overly positive feedback, measurements and records are constantly being collected and analyzed for better or worse — or both.

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Improving Competitive Broadband Access to Multiple Tenant Environments

FCC takes a giant step forward on behalf of consumers.
For better or worse (and often both), loopholes are the way that creative lawyers solve client problems and make partners (read: $). Despite significant amounts of time spent drafting very precise language to minimize gaps in interpretation, even the best of legislators’ and rule makers’ intentions can be thwarted by precise surgical strikes to identify such loopholes (some might call them opportunities) and navigate through them.

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Reading the Tea Leaves on What to Expect from the FCC in 2022

The FCC is primed to make a number of moves in the new year around robocalls, net neutrality, and rural broadband.

The new year is upon us. I hope that this one brings us way closer to what we knew as normal — politics aside. Like each new year, I hope that you’ll join me in looking to 2022 with optimism and hope. When it comes to communications regulations, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t look forward to seeing an end to pesky unsolicited robocalls offering extended car warranties or other mostly worthless goods and services. I also believe that there’s a real hope that new funding for widespread broadband deployment is here, and now it’s simply a question of spending the money and building the required infrastructure. With recent FCC changes, we have reason to be optimistic on these fronts and others.

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