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Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

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Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#101

Post by pashky »

Eastern Europe already checked in, but I thought I'd add yet another anecdote.

In St Petersburg, Russia the only GSM provider had luxurious free 10 seconds, and $0.40/minute after that. Plus fixed monthly fee, of course. $0.40 was very expensive by Russia late 90s standards and at that time mobile phones were used by three (or really just two) distincitve groups: gangsters, emerging business people, and... dudes in IT.

Criminals didn't care about money, but IT crowd was crafty and resourceful. Some phones allowed to configure a beep after 9 seconds prompting you to hang up and redial. Those were valued, but it didn't stop at that - there was even a cottage industry of firmware and hardware hacks for certain models to drop the call and redial automatically.

...and then providers switched to only 5 and then 3 seconds, and $0.10/min, yet for a few more years there were still annoying die-hards who kept their modded phones and old contracts with free 10 seconds and ridiculous price, which were no longer available for new clients.

Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#102

Post by jhugo »

kevincox wrote: post #84
samvher wrote: post #81

I work on a system like this. We provide agricultural advice to farmers (mainly in India and Kenya but also in some other countries). They can leave a missed call on our system, and will receive a call back where they can navigate a menu with information on a variety of topics, or they can record a question which will then be answered by an agronomist (the answer will be pushed to them as a separate call, once it's r…

What is the reason for this? Are incoming calls sheaper than outgoing calls?

Are there places where you pay for incoming calls?

Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#103

Post by kevincox »

jhugo wrote: post #102
kevincox wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the reason for this? Are incoming calls sheaper than outgoing calls?

Are there places where you pay for incoming calls?

I'm in Canada and all of the services I have looked at bill you once you pick up the call. If you are in your local area (for mobile) it is always a local call but you are still charged for the minutes.

Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#104

Post by donohoe »

umeshunni wrote: post #16
throwaway70274 wrote: post #4

In case you didn’t know, this media group was started by Sofia Schmidt, Daughter of Eric Schmidt. It focuses on tech stories from other countries besides the USA.

It focuses on tech stories from other countries besides the USA (but written from a distinctly US point of view). Top stories on the front page right now: * Fighting brain drain and creeping authoritarianism in Russia’s techno-utopian village * A defamation lawsuit in Singapore sets a dangerous precedent * Peru’s surprise presidential front runner has fewer than 8,000 Twitter followers * The mysterious user editing a…

>> (but written from a distinctly US point of view)

Yes and no.

The US audience is important but its not the only audience. If you look at the authors of those articles you will see that most of the writers are based outside of the US and (as much as in possible) in the areas/countries being reported on.

The goal is to increase that metric as much as possible.

* Fighting brain drain and creeping authoritarianism in Russia’s techno-utopian village

- By Leonid Ragozin who is based in Latvia (as far as I know)

* A defamation lawsuit in Singapore sets a dangerous precedent

- By Kirsten Han, a journalist based in Singapore.

* Peru’s surprise presidential front runner has fewer than 8,000 Twitter followers

- By Jimena Ledgard, based in Lima, Peru

* The mysterious user editing a global open-source map in China’s favor

- By Vittoria Elliott, based in USA, and Nilesh Christopher in Bangalore, India.

Full-disclosure: I work there. Writing from personal knowledge.

Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#106

Post by viraptor »

lxgr wrote: post #67
numlock86 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to do something similar not too long ago. Different application really, but I wanted to do something on the other end depending on how often it rang. Sadly I discovered that apparently in all-digital "modern" phone networks (SIP, VoIP etc.) the ringing tone you hear as a caller is simply ingested by your network operator and the tone you hear as the one getting called is basically just some audio file that pl…

> the ringing tone you hear as a caller is simply ingested by your network operator In my experience this depends on the network in question: SIP supports "early media" and I've seen it in action a few times. You can tell by the fact that phone UIs usually don't count connection time in that state, yet you can hear a prerecorded announcement, music mixed with the dialing tone etc. I remember some creative uses of thi…

The early media can still be generated at any point of the calling chain. It doesn't have to correspond to actual ringing, if ringing does happen on the POTS side.

(For a test, you can call someone in the UK and check if you hear Pink Floyd style beeps)

Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#107

Post by amateurdev »

avinoth wrote: post #52

Some memories with those time. We used missed calls for varying reasons depending on the people we interact with. * When going to meet someone, first missed calls says you've started, then the second missed calls says you've reached. This will be informed before hand while scheduling the meet. * You're supposed to reject when you're expecting a mutually agreed missed call, and if the call comes the 2nd time immediate…

Yup, there were several tricks like these! My father used to travel a lot and paying for roaming was expensive. So when he was available to speak, he'd just give a missed call at a fixed time and we used to call him from the landline (much cheaper). If we didn't get a missed call, he was busy.

I also remember while going to college, I had bus connectivity, but had to walk the last 3km or so home. I used to call either of my parents to come pick me up when I was around 15 minutes away from the bus stop.

Re: Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India

#110

Post by pedro_hab »

In Brazil there is a 3 second delay before calls start charging. [1]

So we would call multiple times, speaking fast during the first 3 seconds then hanging up.

Then they blocked it, after 10 3 sec calls calls and you couldn't make calls for a while.

[1] https://www.anatel.gov.br/hotsites/conversao_pulso_minuto/ta...

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