When providing support, you have to be very precise when you ask someone to perform a check. The sentence "can you telnet to the port" is unambiguous. The sentence "can you make a TCP connection" leaves the choice of the tool unspecified. Depending of their background, some people may use ping (subject to different firewall rules), or a browser (subject to proxy configuration).
Ping doesn't make TCP connections!
I know, but for many people, pinging the remote host is their single idea for network issue analyse.
When I'm testing a mail server I'll sometimes use telnet to connect (eg to port 110), or openssl for testing secured connections. What should I be using; or is it just the nomenclature you're bothered about?
One thing I like about the original and the gnu netcat is the z option: `nc -z host port; echo $?` for quick testing.