14 ms·

In Praise of Phone Calls

89 points by tintinnabula 7y ago

njarboe 7y ago
A landline costs just as much as a smart phone plan, so very few people can justify the cost of both. I find that having just one end of a conversation on a landline improves the quality greatly and pay the ~$40 a month to have one (also, the long ago installed alarm is hooked up to it). Smart phone to smart phone calls are bad in many ways (drops, static, distortion, etc.) but what I find the most annoying is the excess delay. The old landline to landline calls had no more delay than talking to someone in person.
- toast0 7y ago
  If you've got good enough wired internet, a voip based "landline" is pretty inexpensive, and if you run with the G.711 codec, it's basically landline equivalent, with a small latency penalty (much less than cellphone though). In theory G.722 (AMR-wideband, aka "HD voice") is coming to cell phones via VoLTE and is also available (in theory) via VoIP providers, and should be better than landline quality, but with added latency. Of course, once enough steps have added latency it becomes noticeable, but perhaps the increased frequency range makes it worthwhile; and it requires interop work between carriers.
  - timthorn 7y ago
    Wideband AMR has been available for a decade on 3G, Eg https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11138503 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11138503
    - toast0 7y ago
      Being available and actually being used when making calls are unfortunately two different things.
      - timthorn 7y ago
        It's certainty been in service on the network I use for many years. It is noticeable when I call another enabled endpoint.
  - doctorshady 7y ago
    The AMR wideband codec is G.722.2 - it's separate from the ADPCM implementation standardized as G.722. The two sound quite different. Everyone's ears are different, but I can't say I've been crazy about AMR wideband. Linear predictive coding in general has that characteristic underwater sound.
- tjohns 7y ago
  There are VoIP providers that are incredibly cheap. As an example, I have an account with voip.ms. They charge $0.85/month for the phone number, and then $0.009/minute. (E-911 service costs a little extra.) It's worth it just for having proper 911 service at home. The improved voice quality over cellular is an added benefit.
  - drdeadringer 7y ago
    I was an Ooma early adopter and am still grandfathered into their initial "all calls free" program. I enjoy the call quality as much as how much I haven't had to pay for phone calls over the 11+ years. Note, I'm not including internet costs because I'd be getting that anyway.
- snazz 7y ago
  Most of the people I call are willing to use FaceTime Audio or Signal (in the case of FaceTime Audio they probably don't even notice that they're using it). Since everyone who calls me is usually on a cell phone anyway, I don't gain any audio quality with a landline, do I?
- doctorshady 7y ago
  On a fully time division multiplexed (read: no IP packets; just end-to-end multiplexed serial streams) call, it should be no more than ~40 milliseconds of latency from one side of the United States to the next, or no more than quantization delay from the g.711 codec (0.125 milliseconds) when simply traversing the bus of the local switch. Thankfully, there's discounts stashed here and there for landline phones. Some are easier to get than others, though, and it definitely doesn't help that like with anything else from a telco, the price keeps getting jacked up.
  - emanuensis 7y ago
    Very very revealing! Thanks! i would assume that VoIP calling would suffer from the same "packet switching" issue that mobile telephones do:-(( With the current emergency caused by the corona virus there is a huge up tick in remote work. A whole sector of this suffers immensely from "Latency" issues. There is a huge market for the solution of that problem: Choral groups, various meditation practices involving a shared "soundscape", etc. Perhaps a quick solution for the more professional groups with that issue is to require all members to have a "Land Line" and then do a conference call.
- Cd00d 7y ago
  I thought that having a landline only increased exposure to spam and robocalls. How do you filter so your phone rings only from people you'd want to talk to?
  - drewnick 7y ago
    My Spectrum voice service is $10/mo and has a 30-number white list. Everyone else is blocked.
  - doctorshady 7y ago
    Selective call forwarding, if you have it, will get rid of a fair number of things. The do not call list as well is still surprisingly effective.
  - davidajackson 7y ago
    I have a number of customers for my app CallStop who are elderly and use the app to filter calls on landlines. It works by forwarding calls from their landline to the app, and then customers receive calls via VOIP PushKit and filter them via a whitelist.
  - njarboe 7y ago
    When the robo call problem spiked on my landline, I was getting 5-10 per day. Then I stated answering the phone with the phrase "Please leave a message at the tone." and made a beep noise. This got the calls down to 0-2 per day after awhile (also, I'm on the do not call list). Most people could tell it was really me and, if not, I could just wait until they said something to respond. I've heard that some organizations call numbers to see if and when actual people pick up and then sell that information to scammers. Signaling to them that the number goes to a machine seemed to reduce scam calls.
- icedchai 7y ago
  You can get a VOIP landline pretty cheap. I ported my 20-year old landline phone number from Verizon to a VOIP provider. I now pay $5/month for what used to cost $45.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > The old landline to landline calls had no more delay than talking to someone in person. Depends. They had such awful sound quality that they could induce delay while you tried to understand what the other person had said.
  - hmphd 7y ago
    When was this? I didn't have a cell phone for years after they were available and popular(I'm talking about iphone era and all) due to incarceration among other issues, I've spent more time than the average bear on a variety of phones. Pay or otherwise. I have never had that problem on a landline. Maybe some mild static with a cordless phone but from mid 90's on what you're describing was not a big deal at all.
- dustincoates 7y ago
  > A landline costs just as much as a smart phone plan, so very few people can justify the cost of both. This may be true in the US, but isn't the case everywhere. Here in France, I've got a landline number for free included with my Internet. I don't use it because I have no need (and the only people with whom I'd speak are back in the US), but it's there nonetheless.
- ClikeX 7y ago
  The landline in the Netherlands costs 1 euro a month extra on my home internet bill. Granted it's a digital line now, the old analog lines are disconnected. Most people I know only have a landline because they had it since before mobile phones were widespread. And many older people still call on the landline because they're just used to that number.
xenospn 7y ago
I've hated phone calls all my life - I still dread making them today (and I'm a 40 year old man). I will literally miss extremely important business opportunities because I put off calling someone for too long. Texting and emails are life savers for me, and if people tell me "they're not the texting type", I'll simply disengage.
- saber6 7y ago
  As a 33 year old I really am confused by this statement. While I love my texting, slack, etc, nothing replaces the low-latency engagement (intimacy) of a one on one phone call. I can parse someone's tone very easily on a phone call. Text rarely conveys such depth.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >nothing replaces the low-latency engagement (intimacy) of a one on one phone call. For a lot of people, texting absolutely does replace the intimacy of a phone call. I have an ex-girlfriend who almost never talked to me on the phone, and only wanted to text, and she was like this with all her friends too. Note the "ex-" part here...
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    I struggle with phone calls. I find them quite anxiety inducing with anyone who I don't know well. I think because I find it hard to read tone of voice accurately, and to control my tone of voice to accurately convey my emotions. I generally much prefer in person contact. And messaging to arrange it. Also: not sure if you are young enough to be in the MSN generation? But a good chunk of my generation (I'm 26), grew up spending every evening conversing via text for a chunk of our teenage years. We got pretty good at conveying emotion through text (using longggg words... elipsis for pauses, emojis, and idioms (lol, lmao, AF), etc)
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      I'm also 26, and I definitely relate to the teenage IM experience. I think the problem with phone calls is that it's an unnatural level of focus to give someone you don't know well. when you meet face-to-face, there's always some little distractions available to fill the gaps in the conversation. silence is way worse without context; after fifteen seconds or so, the other person will say "hey, are you still there?" I also find myself missing one word out of every other sentence the person says, so there's a lot of backtracking. as an aside, I've noticed that my cohort of people who grew up sending hundreds of messages/texts to their friends every night don't really interact that way anymore over text. back then if the person was online, they would usually respond immediately and you could exchange a lot of information really fast. now every response seems to take a few minutes or an hour (I do this myself too, don't mean to blame anyone). it has the weird effect of making text a less useful way to communicate than it was ten or fifteen years ago. I guess when everything is immediate and urgent, nothing is?
sudosteph 7y ago
I feel the author's point about having a dedicated physical device. I feel that way about my preference for a fountain pen and a notebook versus my laptop. The thing I absolutely cannot relate to though is the joy over getting "surprise" phone calls. I don't want a land-line, even if the quality is better, because I don't want another device making noises and demanding my attention. Sure you could unplug it when you're not using it, but I'd feel like too much of a jerk doing that. Voicemails are also just another thing that make noise or lights and demand attention. I hate podcasts, and have issues with audio processing in general - but in some ways I actually think ham radios are the ideal. I don't normally talk on mine - but sometimes I like listening in on some of the local repeaters and hearing the convos there. I'm out in the NC mountains right now, so It's kind of cool to hear the accents of some of the older guys (reminds me of my grandad's accent), plus they're always swapping crazy stories. I also like the give-and-take nature of ham radio, since people tend to be very cognizant of how much time they are taking up and the need to make space on the channel to let others jump in and talk. And of course, I like that you can just turn it off if you're not feeling like hearing people's voices.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  I remember the days of surprise phone calls, and enjoyed them because there really weren't other forms of distraction. People usually called because they were interested, not always because they needed something or to work out the logistics of something else. Today, surprise phone calls seem unwanted because we already have other devices beeping, vibrating, and popping up at us constantly. Because people overshare their lives on social media, few talk one-on-one to ask each other how they are doing. When they do call, it's because they need something, or because of bad news, like a relative dying.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    My problem with "surprise phone calls" is that they don't fit in my schedule. With a full time job and two going kids, I am always busy with something. The chance of the call coming when I have 5 free minutes is very unlikely. I am either busy with work, making dinner, putting the kids to bed, etc. I can't just stop those things to talk to someone. This is especially true for calls about something I need to think about... I can't context switch that easily.
acd 7y ago
I bought an simple mobile phone to make more phone calls. It works when I use that device since texting is harder and takes time its easier to call.
- canofbars 7y ago
  So you just offload the annoyance to the other person who has to drop what they are doing to answer your call
  - acd 7y ago
    You can make the other person happy by calling them. Its oneself who may think its disturbing for the other. I am sure most people have slack messages coming all the time and that is not disturbing. One can in the same manner answering phone calls, if one do not have time to talk one can say that you are busy.
bradlys 7y ago
Ironically - I strictly talk to certain people over phone. For instance, my parents. I don't have a good relationship with them and therefore keep distance by making it only possible to really talk to me through phone calls. I think I've texted them a total of five messages. I'll text other people quite a bit - to the point where we've rarely ever talked on the phone and it's awkward to talk to them on it. (In person - we're fine) Nowadays, I find it very hard to find time to talk to people on the phone that isn't at an awkward time. (Or that I can do with privacy - as I live in a very small in-law unit in the bay area) When we do, it's for long stretches. 30 minutes or an hour. I don't think I know how to have a short phone call with friends. So, sometimes I call a friend midday at work and go for a long walk. It's nice. I like hearing their voices and I can always hear the things they're up to. It's a peak into their life. I can visualize them getting out of the car, driving along, grocery shopping, arranging the apartment, cooking dinner, etc. as we talk. I'm usually the weird one - just walking on the sidewalk or sitting in my unit alone - maybe tiding up a bit. Video chat can be nice but it feels stilted. We're not exactly in eachother's lives at the moment. Instead, it's an orchestrated interaction rather than, "Hey, let's go do some errands together like we used to when we lived closer."
- lainga 7y ago
  Thank you for being so candid.
mntmoss 7y ago
Yesterday I did a Discord voice hangout with the folks I normally co-work with. It went off pretty well, I got to hike outside while talking to them. It does have its limits, though. Everyone's voices get filtered through the system with the usual dropouts, zombie connections, feedback issues and equipment variations making it so that some people are heard more clearly than others. But as a measure for connecting without physical presence it's a godsend, and a group chat can be less structured than a meeting or phone call. Set a rough starting time, let people hang out in the room, and things happen. Not the same things that happen in person, but it's enough.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
greggman3 7y ago
I used to love phone calls and called my friends all the time, pre 2000. Since then moved to Japan (so for a while no one to call) and texting or messaging became more expected. I now make probably less than a call a month. I miss the conversation and connection. When I do call I usually message first "Ok to call?" On the other hand I went back to the USA for 2 weeks recently and within the first 15 minutes of installing my USA sim I got a robocall. I continued to get several a day the entire 2 weeks I was there. Never gotten a robocall in Japan.

89 points by tintinnabula 7y ago

A landline costs just as much as a smart phone plan, so very few people can justify the cost of both. I find that having just one end of a conversation on a landline improves the quality greatly and pay the ~$40 a month to have one (also, the long ago installed alarm is hooked up to it). Smart phone to smart phone calls are bad in many ways (drops, static, distortion, etc.) but what I find the most annoying is the excess delay. The old landline to landline calls had no more delay than talking to someone in person.

toast0 7y ago
If you've got good enough wired internet, a voip based "landline" is pretty inexpensive, and if you run with the G.711 codec, it's basically landline equivalent, with a small latency penalty (much less than cellphone though). In theory G.722 (AMR-wideband, aka "HD voice") is coming to cell phones via VoLTE and is also available (in theory) via VoIP providers, and should be better than landline quality, but with added latency. Of course, once enough steps have added latency it becomes noticeable, but perhaps the increased frequency range makes it worthwhile; and it requires interop work between carriers.
- timthorn 7y ago
  Wideband AMR has been available for a decade on 3G, Eg https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11138503 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11138503
  - toast0 7y ago
    Being available and actually being used when making calls are unfortunately two different things.
    - timthorn 7y ago
      It's certainty been in service on the network I use for many years. It is noticeable when I call another enabled endpoint.
- doctorshady 7y ago
  The AMR wideband codec is G.722.2 - it's separate from the ADPCM implementation standardized as G.722. The two sound quite different. Everyone's ears are different, but I can't say I've been crazy about AMR wideband. Linear predictive coding in general has that characteristic underwater sound.
tjohns 7y ago
There are VoIP providers that are incredibly cheap. As an example, I have an account with voip.ms. They charge $0.85/month for the phone number, and then $0.009/minute. (E-911 service costs a little extra.) It's worth it just for having proper 911 service at home. The improved voice quality over cellular is an added benefit.
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  I was an Ooma early adopter and am still grandfathered into their initial "all calls free" program. I enjoy the call quality as much as how much I haven't had to pay for phone calls over the 11+ years. Note, I'm not including internet costs because I'd be getting that anyway.
snazz 7y ago
Most of the people I call are willing to use FaceTime Audio or Signal (in the case of FaceTime Audio they probably don't even notice that they're using it). Since everyone who calls me is usually on a cell phone anyway, I don't gain any audio quality with a landline, do I?
doctorshady 7y ago
On a fully time division multiplexed (read: no IP packets; just end-to-end multiplexed serial streams) call, it should be no more than ~40 milliseconds of latency from one side of the United States to the next, or no more than quantization delay from the g.711 codec (0.125 milliseconds) when simply traversing the bus of the local switch. Thankfully, there's discounts stashed here and there for landline phones. Some are easier to get than others, though, and it definitely doesn't help that like with anything else from a telco, the price keeps getting jacked up.
- emanuensis 7y ago
  Very very revealing! Thanks! i would assume that VoIP calling would suffer from the same "packet switching" issue that mobile telephones do:-(( With the current emergency caused by the corona virus there is a huge up tick in remote work. A whole sector of this suffers immensely from "Latency" issues. There is a huge market for the solution of that problem: Choral groups, various meditation practices involving a shared "soundscape", etc. Perhaps a quick solution for the more professional groups with that issue is to require all members to have a "Land Line" and then do a conference call.
Cd00d 7y ago
I thought that having a landline only increased exposure to spam and robocalls. How do you filter so your phone rings only from people you'd want to talk to?
- drewnick 7y ago
  My Spectrum voice service is $10/mo and has a 30-number white list. Everyone else is blocked.
- doctorshady 7y ago
  Selective call forwarding, if you have it, will get rid of a fair number of things. The do not call list as well is still surprisingly effective.
- davidajackson 7y ago
  I have a number of customers for my app CallStop who are elderly and use the app to filter calls on landlines. It works by forwarding calls from their landline to the app, and then customers receive calls via VOIP PushKit and filter them via a whitelist.
- njarboe 7y ago
  When the robo call problem spiked on my landline, I was getting 5-10 per day. Then I stated answering the phone with the phrase "Please leave a message at the tone." and made a beep noise. This got the calls down to 0-2 per day after awhile (also, I'm on the do not call list). Most people could tell it was really me and, if not, I could just wait until they said something to respond. I've heard that some organizations call numbers to see if and when actual people pick up and then sell that information to scammers. Signaling to them that the number goes to a machine seemed to reduce scam calls.
icedchai 7y ago
You can get a VOIP landline pretty cheap. I ported my 20-year old landline phone number from Verizon to a VOIP provider. I now pay $5/month for what used to cost $45.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> The old landline to landline calls had no more delay than talking to someone in person. Depends. They had such awful sound quality that they could induce delay while you tried to understand what the other person had said.
- hmphd 7y ago
  When was this? I didn't have a cell phone for years after they were available and popular(I'm talking about iphone era and all) due to incarceration among other issues, I've spent more time than the average bear on a variety of phones. Pay or otherwise. I have never had that problem on a landline. Maybe some mild static with a cordless phone but from mid 90's on what you're describing was not a big deal at all.
dustincoates 7y ago
> A landline costs just as much as a smart phone plan, so very few people can justify the cost of both. This may be true in the US, but isn't the case everywhere. Here in France, I've got a landline number for free included with my Internet. I don't use it because I have no need (and the only people with whom I'd speak are back in the US), but it's there nonetheless.
ClikeX 7y ago
The landline in the Netherlands costs 1 euro a month extra on my home internet bill. Granted it's a digital line now, the old analog lines are disconnected. Most people I know only have a landline because they had it since before mobile phones were widespread. And many older people still call on the landline because they're just used to that number.

xenospn 7y ago

I've hated phone calls all my life - I still dread making them today (and I'm a 40 year old man). I will literally miss extremely important business opportunities because I put off calling someone for too long. Texting and emails are life savers for me, and if people tell me "they're not the texting type", I'll simply disengage.

saber6 7y ago
As a 33 year old I really am confused by this statement. While I love my texting, slack, etc, nothing replaces the low-latency engagement (intimacy) of a one on one phone call. I can parse someone's tone very easily on a phone call. Text rarely conveys such depth.
- magduf 7y ago
  >nothing replaces the low-latency engagement (intimacy) of a one on one phone call. For a lot of people, texting absolutely does replace the intimacy of a phone call. I have an ex-girlfriend who almost never talked to me on the phone, and only wanted to text, and she was like this with all her friends too. Note the "ex-" part here...
- nicoburns 7y ago
  I struggle with phone calls. I find them quite anxiety inducing with anyone who I don't know well. I think because I find it hard to read tone of voice accurately, and to control my tone of voice to accurately convey my emotions. I generally much prefer in person contact. And messaging to arrange it. Also: not sure if you are young enough to be in the MSN generation? But a good chunk of my generation (I'm 26), grew up spending every evening conversing via text for a chunk of our teenage years. We got pretty good at conveying emotion through text (using longggg words... elipsis for pauses, emojis, and idioms (lol, lmao, AF), etc)
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    I'm also 26, and I definitely relate to the teenage IM experience. I think the problem with phone calls is that it's an unnatural level of focus to give someone you don't know well. when you meet face-to-face, there's always some little distractions available to fill the gaps in the conversation. silence is way worse without context; after fifteen seconds or so, the other person will say "hey, are you still there?" I also find myself missing one word out of every other sentence the person says, so there's a lot of backtracking. as an aside, I've noticed that my cohort of people who grew up sending hundreds of messages/texts to their friends every night don't really interact that way anymore over text. back then if the person was online, they would usually respond immediately and you could exchange a lot of information really fast. now every response seems to take a few minutes or an hour (I do this myself too, don't mean to blame anyone). it has the weird effect of making text a less useful way to communicate than it was ten or fifteen years ago. I guess when everything is immediate and urgent, nothing is?

sudosteph 7y ago

I feel the author's point about having a dedicated physical device. I feel that way about my preference for a fountain pen and a notebook versus my laptop. The thing I absolutely cannot relate to though is the joy over getting "surprise" phone calls. I don't want a land-line, even if the quality is better, because I don't want another device making noises and demanding my attention. Sure you could unplug it when you're not using it, but I'd feel like too much of a jerk doing that. Voicemails are also just another thing that make noise or lights and demand attention. I hate podcasts, and have issues with audio processing in general - but in some ways I actually think ham radios are the ideal. I don't normally talk on mine - but sometimes I like listening in on some of the local repeaters and hearing the convos there. I'm out in the NC mountains right now, so It's kind of cool to hear the accents of some of the older guys (reminds me of my grandad's accent), plus they're always swapping crazy stories. I also like the give-and-take nature of ham radio, since people tend to be very cognizant of how much time they are taking up and the need to make space on the channel to let others jump in and talk. And of course, I like that you can just turn it off if you're not feeling like hearing people's voices.

ravenstine 7y ago
I remember the days of surprise phone calls, and enjoyed them because there really weren't other forms of distraction. People usually called because they were interested, not always because they needed something or to work out the logistics of something else. Today, surprise phone calls seem unwanted because we already have other devices beeping, vibrating, and popping up at us constantly. Because people overshare their lives on social media, few talk one-on-one to ask each other how they are doing. When they do call, it's because they need something, or because of bad news, like a relative dying.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  My problem with "surprise phone calls" is that they don't fit in my schedule. With a full time job and two going kids, I am always busy with something. The chance of the call coming when I have 5 free minutes is very unlikely. I am either busy with work, making dinner, putting the kids to bed, etc. I can't just stop those things to talk to someone. This is especially true for calls about something I need to think about... I can't context switch that easily.

acd 7y ago

I bought an simple mobile phone to make more phone calls. It works when I use that device since texting is harder and takes time its easier to call.

canofbars 7y ago
So you just offload the annoyance to the other person who has to drop what they are doing to answer your call
- acd 7y ago
  You can make the other person happy by calling them. Its oneself who may think its disturbing for the other. I am sure most people have slack messages coming all the time and that is not disturbing. One can in the same manner answering phone calls, if one do not have time to talk one can say that you are busy.

bradlys 7y ago

Ironically - I strictly talk to certain people over phone. For instance, my parents. I don't have a good relationship with them and therefore keep distance by making it only possible to really talk to me through phone calls. I think I've texted them a total of five messages. I'll text other people quite a bit - to the point where we've rarely ever talked on the phone and it's awkward to talk to them on it. (In person - we're fine) Nowadays, I find it very hard to find time to talk to people on the phone that isn't at an awkward time. (Or that I can do with privacy - as I live in a very small in-law unit in the bay area) When we do, it's for long stretches. 30 minutes or an hour. I don't think I know how to have a short phone call with friends. So, sometimes I call a friend midday at work and go for a long walk. It's nice. I like hearing their voices and I can always hear the things they're up to. It's a peak into their life. I can visualize them getting out of the car, driving along, grocery shopping, arranging the apartment, cooking dinner, etc. as we talk. I'm usually the weird one - just walking on the sidewalk or sitting in my unit alone - maybe tiding up a bit. Video chat can be nice but it feels stilted. We're not exactly in eachother's lives at the moment. Instead, it's an orchestrated interaction rather than, "Hey, let's go do some errands together like we used to when we lived closer."

lainga 7y ago
Thank you for being so candid.

mntmoss 7y ago

Yesterday I did a Discord voice hangout with the folks I normally co-work with. It went off pretty well, I got to hike outside while talking to them. It does have its limits, though. Everyone's voices get filtered through the system with the usual dropouts, zombie connections, feedback issues and equipment variations making it so that some people are heard more clearly than others. But as a measure for connecting without physical presence it's a godsend, and a group chat can be less structured than a meeting or phone call. Set a rough starting time, let people hang out in the room, and things happen. Not the same things that happen in person, but it's enough.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

greggman3 7y ago

I used to love phone calls and called my friends all the time, pre 2000. Since then moved to Japan (so for a while no one to call) and texting or messaging became more expected. I now make probably less than a call a month. I miss the conversation and connection. When I do call I usually message first "Ok to call?" On the other hand I went back to the USA for 2 weeks recently and within the first 15 minutes of installing my USA sim I got a robocall. I continued to get several a day the entire 2 weeks I was there. Never gotten a robocall in Japan.