Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net (Toby Nixon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Questions About the GTE Airfone Message-ID: <15948@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 10 Jan 91 16:33:12 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA Lines: 103 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 22, Message 1 of 9 I just got back from a one-day trip to Washington DC. Both the trip up and the return were on one of Eastern's newly-upgraded 757s, with the huge first class cabin. Every seat in First Class has an Airfone imbedded right in the back of the seat immediately in front (the front row seats have the phone mounted on the bulkhead in front of them). As it turned out, we were required by an ATC computer outage to hold on the taxiway at National Airport for about 45 minutes. Being the nice husband that I am, I decided to call my wife and tell her that I'd be late for dinner. Quite a few other folks decided to place calls, too. Unlike the older Airfones with sort of a curved handset and little stubby antenna (cordless), these built-into-the-seat phones are rectanglar, and attach to the seatback by a cord that is obviously on a reel of some kind inside the seat. To release the phone from the seat, you press a credit card into a little vertical slot. All this does is depress a little mechanical hook, and the phone pops out. Several folks were initially confused by this, assuming that the slot in the seat was supposed to read their card, and got frustrated that the card wouldn't go all the way in. The flight attendants had clearly had to explain this to folks before, since they handled it nicely. The magnetic stripe reader is built into the side of the handset. Simply swipe the card through it. It DTMFs your card number to the control unit, apparently, since you can hear the tones in the background; you can go ahead and put the card back in your pocket (it doesn't retain the card like the older systems). I notice some folks having problems getting their cards to read, apparently because they were swiping them through too slowly. It doesn't say on the phone to do it FAST, but you need to. After reading your card and sending the info to the central controller, an awful digitized voice says "Thank you for using Airfone. Please wait for the dial tone." The first time I tried the call, I got the dial tone almost immediately; the second time (when a few other people were using phones), I had to wait a couple of minutes. When you get the dial tone, you punch in the number you're calling. The voice then says "Now processing your call; please wait." After a period of time (which also varied from a few seconds to a minute), the voice comes back on and reads you the number you dialed; I assume this happens while it is delivering the number to the PSTN, because almost immediately thereafter you start hearing ringbacks. On my first call, I got our answering machine. I used the telephone keypad to command the machine to play messages and a couple of other things, and it seemed to work fine (good news, since this means I could also use it to check voicemail at the office). I left a brief message, and hung up. This call was from the ground at National Airport. My second call was from the air, about 10 minutes outside of Atlanta airport. This time I got my wife on the phone. I had to TELL her that I was still on the plane; she told me that, except for a slight bit of background noise (wind noise, she said), the line was as clear as any payphone in the Atlanta airport. Anyway, that's my experience with the new Airfone system. It was very nice to be able to use my corporate AT&T Card instead of my American Express (as I'd had to do with Airfone before), because that way _I_ don't see the bill and _I_ don't have to account for it on an expense report! Nevertheless, it was also nice to read (on the instruction card) that they'd reduced the rates to $2 setup plus $2 per minute; really not bad at all. In article <15918@accuvax.nwu.edu>, ccplumb@spurge.uwaterloo.ca (Colin Plumb) writes: > All the airphones I've seen are all in one bank, so it makes more > sense for there not to be an instrument n+1 than for it to be where > someone can pick it up and not get a dial tone. If nothing else, the > physical "no more available" is more readily comprehensible to > passengers than bandwidth. This doesn't happen with the new system! You really do end up sitting there with the instrument on your ear, listening to dead silence. It would have been nice if there had been some repeated message to let you know that it hadn't gone dead. I did notice a couple of people give up in frustration; my guess was that they didn't realize they were having to condend with other passengers for circuits. It would be nice if the message explained the situation ( "all circuits now in use; please hold until a circuit is available" ). > (P.S. Do airphones check that you've put back the right phone before > releasing the credit card? It sounds like a great way to exchange a > stolen credit card for a good one. Insert piece of junk, remove > handset, replace in cradle holding gold card dext door. The getaway > offers problems, though.) The older Airfones would not release the card if you tried to put the wrong phone back in a cradle. Your card was locked in place to make sure you didn't walk off with the phone, but at the same time your card was protected because nobody else could get to it unless they returned the right handset. Of course, this isn't an issue with the new system. Toby Nixon, Principal Engineer | Voice +1-404-449-8791 Telex 151243420 Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. | Fax +1-404-447-0178 CIS 70271,404 P.O. Box 105203 | UUCP uunet!hayes!tnixon AT&T !tnixon Atlanta, Georgia 30348 USA | Internet hayes!tnixon@uunet.uu.net