5 ms·

An industry based on missed calls helped bring India online

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I bring this up because I remember arranging similar things with my parents as a child. The walk home from school was moderately long for a kid (4 ish miles) and if it was raining it was uttterly miserable. So I could shelter in the railway station and call home for a lift - but I rarely had the money and hell it was two bags of crisps for a single call. So two missed calls in a row while it was raining was signal to my mum "come get me at the station!" I think I am saying that I am old enough that I span generational shifts in wealth.
- jamiek88 6y ago
  Same here. Three rings meant I was home safe when riding bike 6 miles from nans or to nans. Now all my nieces and nephews have iPhones. Happy for them but something has been lost in independence.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toast0 6y ago
  We did collect calls... Would you like to accept a collect call from senior lot? Meant please pick me up from the senior lot. At some point, collect calling became possible for third parties, and they let the caller hear the other party answer so you knew you got the information to them.
  - drdeadringer 6y ago
    Remember the TV ads regarding telephone calls and collect calls? "You have a collect call from ... 'we-had-a-baby-it's-a-boy' ... do you accept the charges?" "No." [Hangs up] "Who was it?" "Jimmy and Susan. They had a baby. It's a boy." [Buy our better value telephone service!]
    - pcthrowaway 6y ago
      Actually, it was warning about not cheating the phone company, and saving money by buying Geico instead.
    - pimlottc 6y ago
      Link to that ad: https://youtu.be/NxAWqyVY1Fg?t=9 https://youtu.be/NxAWqyVY1Fg?t=9
- markdown 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bh-G4-qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bh-G4-qU
- bengale 6y ago
  I’d completely forgotten this but I remember always keeping a small amount of credit on my phone so I could ‘dead ring’ home and I’d get a call back.
  - moralestapia 6y ago
    Oooh, the memories! :D Used to do that w/ friends who had unltd. call plans.
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  My father had a car phone (that is, for those that may not know, one of the early mobile phones you had to have installed in your car). We also had caller ID at home. We knew if he called us at home and hung up before we answered he was just calling to let us know he was stuck in traffic and would be late for dinner.
aj7 6y ago
My family used a 1-bit missed call signaling system in Brooklyn in the 1950’s. Both -one and -two ring missed calls indicated prearranged messages, generally “arrived safely” or “leaving now.” Back then, poorer families had party telephone lines, too.
gumby 6y ago
Pre mobile phones (but post caller I’d) my wife and I called each other several times a day just to say mushy things to each other. It was ok to ignore the call but an immediate second call meant “actually I need to speak with you”. I’m sure others must have invented the same system. But I love ZipDial‘s idea to take it to another level. The European idea to make receiving GSM calls free was brilliant. The US’s idea that “the person with the radio pays the extra fee” held back mobile adoption in the US by a decade.
colorboy 6y ago
Clogged 30% of national operators capacity without giving a penny That's hell of a deal
drfuchs 6y ago
In my experience even many decades ago in the US, the "ring" that the caller hears in their handset before the recipient picks up is not actually from the "bell" of the recipient's handset; rather, I understand, it is generated at the caller's local switching station. And there's no system-wide synchronization of these ring signals. So, if the recipient hears N actual rings, the caller may have heard N-1, N, or N+1. Does anybody who used these signaling schemes have experiences where the wrong message (or none at all) got communicated?
- inetknght 6y ago
  That's been my experience too. It "works" for local calls but it completely breaks down across a nation.
- toast0 6y ago
  It can be generated more or less anywhere along the path. I don't think it was typically generated at the caller's local switching station, because often there's some delay before it starts, and I didn't think that level of information was communicated. However, sometimes you would get some ringing and before a final signal tone (busy, fast busy, call cannot be completed as dialed, etc). The phone system has almost always been a heterogeneous distributed system with lots of different capabilities though, so lots of possibilities. I have a hard time listening to podcasts or audiobooks, but I like to try to listen to Evan Doorbell's Telephone Tapes, a bunch of old (mostly 1970s) recordings of the phone system with recent commentary from the person who made most of the recordings. http://www.evan-doorbell.com/production/group1.htm http://www.evan-doorbell.com/production/group1.htm
- unishark 6y ago
  In the US, I recall the ringing sound for the caller being different depending on who you were calling. I understood it to be generate by the remote station, powering their ringer via the line. Presumably you could still get different ring counts in such a setup if one side hasn't been connected to the call yet.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  Correct. The remote ring signal (90VAC @ 20Hz IIRC) that causes their phone's bell to ring is generated by their central office. However, I believe (it's been a long time since I did anything phone related) that the "ringback" that the caller hears is only generated when the remote switch verifies that it can complete the call, so it's probably synchronized that way.
walrus01 6y ago
I would encourage any North American or European interested in this sort of thing to go buy a $45 Android phone from aliexpress (or two or three different models, if you're really interested) to see first hand what the very low end of the mobile data smartphone market looks like these days. There are some things out there based on reference mediatek chipset designs that are remarkably not terrible relative to their price. Create a new fake named gmail/google account on one, install some apps from the play store, mess around with it. randomly chosen example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001470142781.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.768b4655QsZKs8&algo_pvid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8&algo_expid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8-3&btsid=0bb0623416180847553736098ed195&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001470142781.html?spm=a2... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001586490693.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.768b4655QsZKs8&algo_pvid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8&algo_expid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8-19&btsid=0bb0623416180847553736098ed195&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001586490693.html?spm=a2...
- baybal2 6y ago
  The problem is cellphone sellers on Aliexpress frequently are simple scams. I.e. you buy something from a seemingly not complete scam seller with few hundred of reviews, you get your tracking number, but nothing actually arrives despite tracking showing somebody in your country claiming the package.
jakub_g 6y ago
It's 2021 and I'm in Europe, and I still use missed calls for calling my family abroad. Typically goes like this: - I call them on Whatsapp, but their Android phone is sleeping so they don't receive the call notif on Whatsapp - I send a missed call via GSM to wake their phone - They call back on Whatsapp International calls are still expensive even within EU, while huge data packages are included in even cheap monthly subs. I can't comprehend the GSM operators' logic.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
  > I call them on Whatsapp, but their Android phone is sleeping so they don't receive the call notif on Whatsapp Is Android really that terrible?
  - zwayhowder 6y ago
    No, I receive Whatsapp call notifications when the phone is off. But it's also a setting that can be disabled. The scenario described doesn't remotely match the user experience I have with Whatsapp calls.
    - jakub_g 6y ago
      It highly depends on manufacturer and phone settings. Some manufacturers have very aggressive battery optimizations by default to claim "look how awesome our battery life is!"
  - kiwijamo 6y ago
    iOS is the same. My husband has an iPhone and I frequently find he doesn't receive WhatsApps notifications in good time. So for urgent messages I now SMS him. And if I send him photos etc I SMS him to check his WhatsApp. Perhaps it's more something to do with WhatsApp's infrastructure than iOS/Android?
  - maven29 6y ago
    Most Android phones let you turn off mobile data and Wi-Fi while the screen is off. Something similar might be at play, since FCM is pretty reliable, even with the most brutal doze parameters and additional power optimization measures imposed by manufacturers.
phoe-krk 6y ago
I remember the same being the case in Poland years ago. "Sending an arrow" was a cheap way of communicating with other people, and it was a savoir-vivre violation to answer a phone that rung for less than five seconds because it could charge someone for a full minute of voice connection even if it was only meant to be an "arrow".
cosmodisk 6y ago
We even had a term for this: 'beacon': the phones were expensive,the tariffs even more so and most kids had very low call credit most of the time. So if you have almost no credit left, you call someone, hang up quickly and they suppose to call you back.
- ljf 6y ago
  We called it a 'drop call' in the UK in the early 2000s (or at least my friends did).
axiolite 6y ago
I really don't understand the article. So in 2003 cellular minutes were expensive. Fair enough. But then we jump to 2010-2016. No information on pricing of calls then, or more importantly, SMS messages... So a missed-call was free. Okay. But was a single SMS message in 2010-2016 really prohibitively expensive? Because it seems to me that a single SMS number, to which you can send a single SMS with an unlimited number of codes in the body to sign-up for various services, is more efficient than a dedicated phone number for each individual service one might want to sign-up for. And we are also left to assume that incoming SMS and calls were free.
wolfretcrap 6y ago
Today this is made obselete by JIO. Either you don't have a plan then you can't call anyone or even do a missed call or you've a plan then you can call anyone and you don't need a missed call as unlimited talktime is offered with all plans. But a basic plan is only $2.1 dollar or so.
- srean 6y ago
  As long as you are OK with opaque censorship and deep packet inspection by your ISP then JIO is fine. Its not the case that only JIO censors, I have found that other ISPs bend over backwards a little less to adhere to the Indian government's capricious censorship. You can search HN to find user's comments on the level of web censorship that goes on in India.

I bring this up because I remember arranging similar things with my parents as a child. The walk home from school was moderately long for a kid (4 ish miles) and if it was raining it was uttterly miserable. So I could shelter in the railway station and call home for a lift - but I rarely had the money and hell it was two bags of crisps for a single call. So two missed calls in a row while it was raining was signal to my mum "come get me at the station!" I think I am saying that I am old enough that I span generational shifts in wealth.

jamiek88 6y ago
Same here. Three rings meant I was home safe when riding bike 6 miles from nans or to nans. Now all my nieces and nephews have iPhones. Happy for them but something has been lost in independence.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toast0 6y ago
We did collect calls... Would you like to accept a collect call from senior lot? Meant please pick me up from the senior lot. At some point, collect calling became possible for third parties, and they let the caller hear the other party answer so you knew you got the information to them.
- drdeadringer 6y ago
  Remember the TV ads regarding telephone calls and collect calls? "You have a collect call from ... 'we-had-a-baby-it's-a-boy' ... do you accept the charges?" "No." [Hangs up] "Who was it?" "Jimmy and Susan. They had a baby. It's a boy." [Buy our better value telephone service!]
  - pcthrowaway 6y ago
    Actually, it was warning about not cheating the phone company, and saving money by buying Geico instead.
  - pimlottc 6y ago
    Link to that ad: https://youtu.be/NxAWqyVY1Fg?t=9 https://youtu.be/NxAWqyVY1Fg?t=9
markdown 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bh-G4-qU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V04bh-G4-qU
bengale 6y ago
I’d completely forgotten this but I remember always keeping a small amount of credit on my phone so I could ‘dead ring’ home and I’d get a call back.
- moralestapia 6y ago
  Oooh, the memories! :D Used to do that w/ friends who had unltd. call plans.
banana_giraffe 6y ago
My father had a car phone (that is, for those that may not know, one of the early mobile phones you had to have installed in your car). We also had caller ID at home. We knew if he called us at home and hung up before we answered he was just calling to let us know he was stuck in traffic and would be late for dinner.

aj7 6y ago

My family used a 1-bit missed call signaling system in Brooklyn in the 1950’s. Both -one and -two ring missed calls indicated prearranged messages, generally “arrived safely” or “leaving now.” Back then, poorer families had party telephone lines, too.

gumby 6y ago

Pre mobile phones (but post caller I’d) my wife and I called each other several times a day just to say mushy things to each other. It was ok to ignore the call but an immediate second call meant “actually I need to speak with you”. I’m sure others must have invented the same system. But I love ZipDial‘s idea to take it to another level. The European idea to make receiving GSM calls free was brilliant. The US’s idea that “the person with the radio pays the extra fee” held back mobile adoption in the US by a decade.

colorboy 6y ago

Clogged 30% of national operators capacity without giving a penny That's hell of a deal

drfuchs 6y ago

In my experience even many decades ago in the US, the "ring" that the caller hears in their handset before the recipient picks up is not actually from the "bell" of the recipient's handset; rather, I understand, it is generated at the caller's local switching station. And there's no system-wide synchronization of these ring signals. So, if the recipient hears N actual rings, the caller may have heard N-1, N, or N+1. Does anybody who used these signaling schemes have experiences where the wrong message (or none at all) got communicated?

inetknght 6y ago
That's been my experience too. It "works" for local calls but it completely breaks down across a nation.
toast0 6y ago
It can be generated more or less anywhere along the path. I don't think it was typically generated at the caller's local switching station, because often there's some delay before it starts, and I didn't think that level of information was communicated. However, sometimes you would get some ringing and before a final signal tone (busy, fast busy, call cannot be completed as dialed, etc). The phone system has almost always been a heterogeneous distributed system with lots of different capabilities though, so lots of possibilities. I have a hard time listening to podcasts or audiobooks, but I like to try to listen to Evan Doorbell's Telephone Tapes, a bunch of old (mostly 1970s) recordings of the phone system with recent commentary from the person who made most of the recordings. http://www.evan-doorbell.com/production/group1.htm http://www.evan-doorbell.com/production/group1.htm
unishark 6y ago
In the US, I recall the ringing sound for the caller being different depending on who you were calling. I understood it to be generate by the remote station, powering their ringer via the line. Presumably you could still get different ring counts in such a setup if one side hasn't been connected to the call yet.
HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
Correct. The remote ring signal (90VAC @ 20Hz IIRC) that causes their phone's bell to ring is generated by their central office. However, I believe (it's been a long time since I did anything phone related) that the "ringback" that the caller hears is only generated when the remote switch verifies that it can complete the call, so it's probably synchronized that way.

walrus01 6y ago

I would encourage any North American or European interested in this sort of thing to go buy a $45 Android phone from aliexpress (or two or three different models, if you're really interested) to see first hand what the very low end of the mobile data smartphone market looks like these days. There are some things out there based on reference mediatek chipset designs that are remarkably not terrible relative to their price. Create a new fake named gmail/google account on one, install some apps from the play store, mess around with it. randomly chosen example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001470142781.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.768b4655QsZKs8&algo_pvid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8&algo_expid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8-3&btsid=0bb0623416180847553736098ed195&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001470142781.html?spm=a2... https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001586490693.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.768b4655QsZKs8&algo_pvid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8&algo_expid=e4db9fee-62e1-4ebc-b5f9-dab1c73113d8-19&btsid=0bb0623416180847553736098ed195&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001586490693.html?spm=a2...

baybal2 6y ago
The problem is cellphone sellers on Aliexpress frequently are simple scams. I.e. you buy something from a seemingly not complete scam seller with few hundred of reviews, you get your tracking number, but nothing actually arrives despite tracking showing somebody in your country claiming the package.

jakub_g 6y ago

It's 2021 and I'm in Europe, and I still use missed calls for calling my family abroad. Typically goes like this: - I call them on Whatsapp, but their Android phone is sleeping so they don't receive the call notif on Whatsapp - I send a missed call via GSM to wake their phone - They call back on Whatsapp International calls are still expensive even within EU, while huge data packages are included in even cheap monthly subs. I can't comprehend the GSM operators' logic.

ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
> I call them on Whatsapp, but their Android phone is sleeping so they don't receive the call notif on Whatsapp Is Android really that terrible?
- zwayhowder 6y ago
  No, I receive Whatsapp call notifications when the phone is off. But it's also a setting that can be disabled. The scenario described doesn't remotely match the user experience I have with Whatsapp calls.
  - jakub_g 6y ago
    It highly depends on manufacturer and phone settings. Some manufacturers have very aggressive battery optimizations by default to claim "look how awesome our battery life is!"
- kiwijamo 6y ago
  iOS is the same. My husband has an iPhone and I frequently find he doesn't receive WhatsApps notifications in good time. So for urgent messages I now SMS him. And if I send him photos etc I SMS him to check his WhatsApp. Perhaps it's more something to do with WhatsApp's infrastructure than iOS/Android?
- maven29 6y ago
  Most Android phones let you turn off mobile data and Wi-Fi while the screen is off. Something similar might be at play, since FCM is pretty reliable, even with the most brutal doze parameters and additional power optimization measures imposed by manufacturers.

phoe-krk 6y ago

I remember the same being the case in Poland years ago. "Sending an arrow" was a cheap way of communicating with other people, and it was a savoir-vivre violation to answer a phone that rung for less than five seconds because it could charge someone for a full minute of voice connection even if it was only meant to be an "arrow".

cosmodisk 6y ago

We even had a term for this: 'beacon': the phones were expensive,the tariffs even more so and most kids had very low call credit most of the time. So if you have almost no credit left, you call someone, hang up quickly and they suppose to call you back.

ljf 6y ago
We called it a 'drop call' in the UK in the early 2000s (or at least my friends did).

axiolite 6y ago

I really don't understand the article. So in 2003 cellular minutes were expensive. Fair enough. But then we jump to 2010-2016. No information on pricing of calls then, or more importantly, SMS messages... So a missed-call was free. Okay. But was a single SMS message in 2010-2016 really prohibitively expensive? Because it seems to me that a single SMS number, to which you can send a single SMS with an unlimited number of codes in the body to sign-up for various services, is more efficient than a dedicated phone number for each individual service one might want to sign-up for. And we are also left to assume that incoming SMS and calls were free.

wolfretcrap 6y ago

Today this is made obselete by JIO. Either you don't have a plan then you can't call anyone or even do a missed call or you've a plan then you can call anyone and you don't need a missed call as unlimited talktime is offered with all plans. But a basic plan is only $2.1 dollar or so.

srean 6y ago
As long as you are OK with opaque censorship and deep packet inspection by your ISP then JIO is fine. Its not the case that only JIO censors, I have found that other ISPs bend over backwards a little less to adhere to the Indian government's capricious censorship. You can search HN to find user's comments on the level of web censorship that goes on in India.