Missed call communication protocol

[Jonathon Suggs]

Alexandre Ghisoli wrote:
> I was working on a project, maybe 15 years ago, where we developped a "modem" to transfer data :
> 1/ during setup, for free
> 2/ during the blanks of a conversation (approx 80% of the time, because only one speaks at time, so you got a free 64kbps channel ))
> This takes not very long until telco notice the D channel trafic, and since then, they charge for alerting, even if no answer (maybe 10% of unanswered call) to cover this trafic costs.

Telcos are not going to let this type of thing happen.  I'm all for being able to do things for 'free as in beer' with my 'free as in speech' phone...BUT if we start abusing some features/protocols then they will notice/retaliate.

That said, this has been a great thread with some very good concepts and "outside the box" thinking.  However, the underlying concept of what we are doing/proposing *IS WRONG* no matter how you look at it.  We are trying to effectively use something that does cost money (air time) and instead of paying for it, manipulate it so that we get benefit and pay nothing in return.  Look up the definition of parasite.  Sorry if this is brash, and I feel as though telcos are over controlling and should be deregulated.  But this is not the way to go about it.

This is also has potential for giving OpenMoko and open phones in general a bad name/press.  Headlines reading "renegade phones undermine network, higher charges for everyone coming" with some baseless statistics about how much it cost them to effectively ban this activity.

With a project in its infancy we need to make friends not enemies.  We especially don't need to (unnecessarily) piss off the people that control the communication links...as without them (love or hate them) we can't really do anything.

I think it was brought up before that the underlying messaging protocol should be pluggable/interchangeable.  That sounds like a good way to proceed.  Being able to specify if you should get notifications via SMS or a persistent GPRS connection or even possibly through an out-of-band signaling method like what is being discussed sounds like a good way of proceeding.  Then, the user can have the choice of using the best method given their situation.  I would choose GPRS since I have a unlimited usage flat-rate plan, others have free/cheap SMS, so they could use that.