Don't Pick Up: Missed calls in India
restofworld.org
restofworld.org
It was my second open source project: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/rin...
I was still getting support requests for it in the late 2000s from people who were using it in South Africa :)
At least it explains the "You only heard it ring once? I let it ring like five times before I hung up! Seriously!"-anecdotes I keep picking up. :)
A simple experiment: let your counter party put a metronome next to their microphone, and enjoy the time distortion.
That's an amusing typo - I suppose that should be 'injected', but Pac-Man pops to mind ...
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 this as well: If you controlled the signalling stack, it was possible to keep a connection open in this state indefinitely without either end getting charged.
Here's a relevant RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3960
(For a test, you can call someone in the UK and check if you hear Pink Floyd style beeps)
When asked for my name I would usually use my first name and use my last name as the place to pick me up from. If that gave them enough information then they could reject the call, which would cost them nothing.
If it was an actual emergency, I was to immediately call back again and then they would accept the call. It was a great way to get free messages.
[0] Remember this was the 80s, no mobile phones. And a collect call was free from a payphone, since the callee was expected to accept and pay the charges.
* 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 immediately, then you should pick up.
* During meets, there usually is one organizer who everyone gives missed call to update their status and they'll follow-up with another missed call to those who didn't update. I know it sounds complicated, but it surprisingly isn't.
* Before mobile, landline was pretty common and caller IDs were almost non-existent, missed calls with a pattern are the way to denote that its you that's calling to make sure her parents does not pick up the phone :). One ring, then two rings, and she should be near the phone for the next call to pick (you hope and pray its not her dad, again.) and pretend to talk with a friend.
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.
He doesn’t believe they realized he was half in the bag filling their prescriptions.
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.
We also had an understanding of the number of based on the number of rings, too: 1 ring and hang up was when my aunt got home and 2 rings was my cousin got home. They could call us long distance to let us know they got home OK.
Another trick was to place operator-assisted person-to-person calls with the names of different fictional people representing different messages.
For example, Harvey Jones could mean "Pick me up at the diner."
Resulted in such wonders as a famous "itsbobwehadababyitsaboy" commercial .
The trick was to say that your name is "come pick me up mom" or something like that.
It also features in Iain Bank's novel Whit from 1995. The main character is a member of a Scottish religious cult, who mitigate their exposure to "ungodly" technology by using a message-passing code based on the number of rings before hanging up. Its a long time since I read the book, but I seem to recall some detail about it having to be error-tolerant because the ring-tones that the caller hears don't necessarily match those heard by the recipient.
I still wonder what was the reason for that free window, was it a technical limitation?
It used to be 10 or even 15 seconds in the very beginning of GSM service here (I have never used an NMT or DAMPS device so not sure about them).
10 seconds used to be plenty for a meaningful discussion.
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 global open-source map in China’s favor
No thanks - I'll stick to reading international media.
I personally think this is a fantastic gateway. I'd love to have a better global perspective, but I simply don't have the resources (or time) to build a deeply informed opinion. This type of media gives me access to foreign tech within easy reach. Honestly, it gives me exposure to topics that I wouldn't even know exists. If it's a topic that piques my interest, I can certainly find alternative coverage (hopefully with less bias).
[1] https://restofworld.org/2020/bangladesh-economy-runs-on-face...
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.
I got a VOIP number in my home country, and set up my mobile number (at home) to redirect to that - this is a feature of GSM, so should be supported nearly everywhere. *21*<destination number># to activate it. My home number was just calling another local number, so it was included in my plan. I setup the VOIP number to forward to the SIM in the country, and every time I went somewhere new I just changed the destination number. So I was reachable, and only had to pay a few pence per minute for it.
That mostly worked, but when someone called me it showed my VOIP number, not the number of the person who originally called. In Asterisk I could see I was receiving the caller's phone number, but my SIP trunk provider was filtering it out. One little email to support and I was able to set the originating number so it showed who actually called me - in reality this meant I could call anyone worldwide with any originator number shown.
The other problem which goes with this article is how to make outgoing calls. At first I used a SIP client on my computer, but then I went to a few places with pretty poor internet so that wasn't possible. I setup a script on Asterisk so if it received a phone call from my number (of the local SIM I had at the time) it would reject the call, then after a few seconds call me back. It would present a dial tone, and allow me to enter a phone number to call, after which it would dial it and connect me. Technically someone could have spoofed that, and made phone calls at my expense, but I figured the risk was pretty low. Boom, ultra low cost international calls while travelling :-)
That, combined with the fact that it appears to be unique to just the US & Canada (maybe NANP in general), makes it bizarre to me.
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...
There was also the case where one of your friends would have many free minutes in one of the network. Then you would just "clip" them and the expectation was that they call you, because it was for free.
I remember doing it with friends, girls I liked... it's interesting how we're constantly looking for ways to communicate.
Oh, and it served as an equivalent of Facebook's "poke" among teenagers.
ring ring, ring ring, MUM ring ring, ring ring, PICK ring ring, ring ring, ME UP
If she wanted to talk to us, she would call and hang up after one ring. That was our signal to call her. There was no call-ID at the time, so we had to guess if it was her. It still cost us money to call, but she was fine with that!
One example: you send a couple serious texts to a close friend or partner after an argument. They stay unread and you get no response. You then call and see if they pick up after a few rings. If not you hang up and wait or maybe write it off. If the other person is there (and often you know they are there monitoring their phone) maybe now they respond (via txt or call) because they see it as important. If they don’t that says something about where things stand.
Another: you call someone first and get no answer. You then send some texts explaining why you want to chat and the urgency or context. From there you can gauge if the other person cares enough to respond quickly or ignore.
Obviously this all assumes an always online context for both parties, which can cause its own issues when that may not be the case.
Missed calls still hold a lot of important signal in an age of “I only txt” always connected people.
How could the mobile phone radio station make money calling and playing music and ads to people who couldn't afford to make calls themselves?
Then in the University we started giving signals to computers using missed calls before using SMSs later, as they became cheap or even free in bulk.
Before smartphones, apps and easy access to Internet in India, SMS and calls did cost a lot of money. To lower the barriers for response to billboard ads customer would call a hotline, the phone would ring twice and automatically disconnect, and the system would reply within seconds with dynamic content, through a call or texts.