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Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

charge.co

31–40 of 195 posts

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#31
Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that.

Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me.

Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on your basic SSL best practices.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#32
post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#33
post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

I have T-mobile and don't have voicemail. I just called and had it disabled.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#34
post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.

Ok, that's sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that's how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc. Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it wouldn't be a bizarre outcome for them ...

I would also like the ability to play a message, but then have no ability to leave a message.

The lame way to do this is to let your vm inbox fill up, and then everyone gets the "the person you called is too stupid to figure out voicemail" message.

What I would like is an option to play a message ("hi you've reached so and so and here is my email address and have a nice day!") and then ... no beep ... no message ... nothing. Maybe just pause a bit and then a fast-busy.[1]

How can I do things like this ? I've been meaning for years to self-provide my own dial tone in the same way I self-provide my own email, but I just don't have the time to get it all set up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reorder_tone

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#35
post #20

I'd like to see cell plans targeted at remote "Internet of Things" usage. Say you have some sensor that you want to transmit X bytes back to the server every hour. Instead of paying for a bulk set of gigabytes you pay for the bandwidth and frequency you use the network.

Most major providers around the world have M2M/IoT offerings but you normally need high volumes to get their interest. I work for a company that have 20,000+ devices deployed across Africa using less than 1MB per month with a very reasonable tariff.

For lower volumes and DIY projects there are many re-sellers such as Aeris, Particle, Wireless Logic and more

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#36

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that. Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me. Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on yo…

... takes offence at being called a geek

... calls out the company for using Go instead of Erlang

Just sayin'. :)

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#37
post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

Charge CEO here. We can definitely disable voicemail for you. I actually have it disabled myself. Just send us an email to get it removed.

We should probably just add a checkbox for it in the management UI though now that I think about it.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.

Ok, that's sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that's how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc. Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it w…

Well, maybe your voice mail message can be lots of ringing then.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#39

Price is not competitive with T-Mobile 5GB @ $30/mo plan. I guess the only interesting use case is for low-bandwidth use on data-only plan just to get a device connected.

That $30 T-Mobile plan is the plan I used to have before I started the company. I actually found that I was using way less data than I thought.

Just looking at my Charge dashboard, for the last week (which wasn't atypical), I used ~120MB.

Doesn't matter how many GBs are in your plan, if you don't use them, the price per GB is still high.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#40

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that. Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me. Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on yo…

I think your reaction is relatively rare these days. More and more I see lots of people in tech and gaming communities embracing the words 'nerd' and 'geek' as a way of describing their social subgroup. For example, 'geeky' has come to be desirable in lots of fashion (just google 'geeky guy' and it's all about how desirable they are! okay, maybe those search results are tailored to me?), and it's a thing people would describe themselves as to attract on others on, say, dating website profiles.
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