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Gmail Users Make One Million Calls in 24 Hours

Sarah Jacobsson Purewal
PC World
Aug 27, 2010 7:21 am

Google's latest Gmail phone calling feature hit the ground running with over one million phone calls placed from Gmail in first 24 hours the feature was available, Google said Thursday via Twitter.The big question is how many will make Gmail calls in the following 24 hours after people have gotten over the novelty of placing calls via their e-mail inbox.

This isn't terribly surprising that Google is has seen such day-one success considering Gmail has over 175 million monthly users, and the new feature is basically a combination of two popular services Gmail Voice Chat and Google Voice.

The feature, which is currently only available to U.S. Gmail users, allows users to place free "local" (within the United States and Canada) phone calls, as well as cheap international calls. Google says it's subsidizing the "local" calls with the international calls' rates, though these rates are still quite low. You can call a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Argentina, China, and Japan, for as low as two cents per minute.

Google says that the local calls are free for now, and will be through at least the end of this year. However, things may change as the service catches on (though it looks like it already is).

The feature is not yet available to all U.S. Gmail users. It's quite simple to use, however—at the top of your chat bar there is a "call phone" option. Simply click on it and a number pad will appear, on which you can dial your desired number and place a phone call. Naturally, a microphone is necessary in order for you to be able to communicate with the person on the other end of the line.

If you're just a regular user, the recipient of your call will see your phone number as 760-705-8888. If you have Google Voice, however, the two services will integrate and the recipient of your call will see your Google Voice number.

At the moment a lot of people are still wondering why Google has decided to roll out this feature at all (to up the interest in Google Voice? Have a head-to-head battle with Skype?). But, while it's free, we may as well take advantage of it—here's to a million more calls over Gmail in the next 24 hours. [source]

FCC Seeks Nominations by September 17, 2010, for Membership on the Emergency Response Interoperability Center Public Safety Advisory Committee. [source]

Government Report Measures U.S. Wireless Market

By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor

Just how fair is the competition in the wireless market? If you are a smaller player, you may find it to be extremely skewed.

According to a recent government report – featured in an Associated Press article – the consolidation in this space over the last 20 years has allowed dominance in 90 percent of the market. The study was completed by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.

There are some who believe the results could help strengthen the Federal Communications Commission’s argument for enhanced oversight of the wireless industry.One of the rules the FCC is currently considering includes requiring wireless phone companies to alert consumers before they actually reach roaming or data usage limits on a wireless plan. The agency has also been examining common industry practices that may or may not be unfair to consumers.

One thing under closer examination is termination fees that occur when contracts are terminated before expiration. Although the smaller provider may find the industry more challenging, consumers are enjoying the benefits of better wireless coverage and prices that are proving to be roughly half of what they were in 1999.

The GOA report found that at the end of 2009, there were 285 million cell phone subscribers in the United States. In 1989, there were 3.5 million users. In addition, nearly 40 percent of U.S. households rely on a cell phone as their primary phone. As for why the market tends to favor larger providers, there are a number of factors referred to in the report, including early termination fees and handset exclusivity.

It doesn't help that AT&T is the only provider that can offer the iPhone. Although this could be challenged in the future as Android is rapidly gaining ground. Special access regulations also garnered some complaints as this element grants access to the vital back-haul lines that connect wireless towers to broader telecommunications networks.

Smaller carriers claim they pay excessive prices for such access due to the fact that most of this infrastructure is owned by companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications. As to what the FCC might do with the results of this report, time will tell. As to strengthening oversight of the wireless industry, this has proven to be a slow and rocky road. Will it improve in the future? Given the size of this market and the players involved, don’t look for drastic changes anytime soon. [source]

Now on to more news and views.

Wireless Messaging News
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There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world's major Paging and Wireless Data companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers — so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It's all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology. I regularly get readers' comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Data communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my web site. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it.

Editorial Opinion pieces present the opinions of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of AAPC, its publisher, or its sponsors.

Brad Dye, Ron Mercer, Allan Angus, and Vic Jackson are friends and colleagues who work both together and independently, on wireline and wireless communications projects. Click here  for a summary of their qualifications and experience. They collaborate on consulting assignments, and share the work according to their individual expertise and their schedules.

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American Association of Paging Carriers

AAPC Presses Case to FCC on Reform of USF Contribution Methodology

Responding to an invitation from the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, AAPC counsel Ken Hardman met with FCC officials on Wednesday, August 18th, to discuss AAPC’s position on pending proposals to reform the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) contribution methodology. Currently, paging carriers who are large enough must contribute a percentage of their interstate subscriber revenues to the FCC to fund the construction and operation of telephone networks in rural areas and certain related programs administered by the FCC under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The USF disburses approximately $8 billion annually to wireline and wireless carriers serving rural areas, health care institutions in rural areas, schools and libraries and low-income subscribers, up from disbursements of $4.5 billion in 2000. The factor used by carriers to calculate their USF contribution obligation likewise has increased from 5.9% during the 1st quarter of 2000 to 15.3% during the 2nd quarter of 2010.

Seizing upon the spiraling USF contribution factor, AT&T, Verizon and large corporate users are urging the FCC to jettison the existing “percentage of revenues” USF contribution methodology, and to instead adopt a contribution methodology based upon a flat monthly fee per telephone number assigned to customers (often referred to in shorthand as the “Numbers” contribution methodology). Estimates by proponents of “Numbers” are that the initial fee would be in the range of $1.20 or more per month per telephone number; but AAPC anticipates that the initial fee would sharply increase once “Numbers” actually is implemented.

Obviously, adding a new “tax” of $1.20 or more per month per pager to the customer’s bill represents a huge threat to the paging industry. AAPC has clearly recognized this threat from the beginning and has been lobbying the FCC against the “Numbers” proposal since AAPC was formed in 2002.

Most recently, the FCC has forwarded to the United States Congress a proposed National Broadband Plan (NBP) seeking to repurpose the USF from support of traditional telephone services in rural areas to support of high-speed broadband services and facilities. As part of that repurposing, the FCC staff has recommended that the USF contribution methodology be reexamined and modified to support the scope and breadth of the services funded by the USF as repurposed. That re-examination is now underway and prompted the invitation to AAPC to discuss contribution reform issues with FCC officials on the 18th.

At the meeting, AAPC contended that no persuasive case has been made by the proponents of “Numbers” to change the existing contribution methodology, and that re-purposing USF to support broadband services and facilities does not change that fact. AAPC further argued that the “percentage of revenues” contribution methodology continues to be the best overall way in which the FCC can harmonize its various public interest considerations in establishing a contribution mechanism. Therefore, AAPC stated, if the USF is repurposed to support broadband services and facilities, providers of the broadband services and facilities should contribute to USF on the same “percentage of revenues” basis as the traditional telecommunications carriers have done.

AAPC also stated that in reviewing USF contribution issues the FCC should revisit whether one-way paging service offerings equitably should be excluded from direct USF contribution obligations. The FCC is expected to release its tentative conclusions on reform of USF contribution methodology later on this year.

 

Advertiser Index

Do Police Need a Warrant for GPS Tracking?

Jacob Sullum | August 25, 2010

In a Time essay, Adam Cohen notes a circuit split on the question of whether police need a warrant to "put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go." Last January a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit unanimously ruled that DEA agents did not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of a suspected marijuana grower by electronically tracking his Jeep, even when they snuck onto his property in the middle of the night to plant a GPS device on the bottom of the car. This month the full court declined to rehear the case, a decision from which Chief Judge Alex Kozinski passionately dissented:

Having previously decimated the protections the Fourth Amendment accords to the home itself, our court now proceeds to dismantle the zone of privacy we enjoy in the home's curtilage and in public. The needs of law enforcement, to which my colleagues seem inclined to refuse nothing, are quickly making personal privacy a distant memory. 1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last....

The modern devices used in Pineda-Moreno's case can record the car's movements without human intervention—quietly, invisibly, with uncanny precision. A small law enforcement team can deploy a dozen, a hundred, a thousand such devices and keep track of their various movements by computer, with far less effort than was previously needed to follow a single vehicle. The devices create a permanent electronic record that can be compared, contrasted and coordinated to deduce all manner of private information about individuals. By holding that this kind of surveillance doesn't impair an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, the panel hands the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives.

As Cohen notes, Kozinski also objected to the panel's conclusion that the DEA did not need a warrant to enter the suspect's driveway, part of the traditionally protected area around the home known as the "curtilage," because he had not put up a fence. Kozinski suggested this reasoning betrays a class bias:

The very rich will still be able to protect their privacy with the aid of electric gates, tall fences, security booths, remote cameras, motion sensors and roving patrols, but the vast majority of the 60 million people living in the Ninth Circuit will see their privacy materially diminished by the panel's ruling...

There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist: No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter. Judges, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex, are selected from the class of people who don't live in trailers or urban ghettos. The everyday problems of people who live in poverty are not close to our hearts and minds because that's not how we and our friends live. Yet poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can't afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it.

Cohen, who seems surprised to hear such arguments from "a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan," notes that "judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton" joined a unanimous decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment does impose restrictions on the use of GPS devices. The August 6 opinion (PDF) was written by Douglas Ginsburg, another libertarian-leaning Reagan appointee (who, you may recall, missed his shot at the Supreme Court because he smoked pot as an assistant law professor at Harvard in the '70s). Like Kozinski, Ginsburg distinguished GPS tracking from tailing a car with the assistance of a surreptitiously placed radio transmitter ("beeper"), a practice the Supreme Court has said does nor require a warrant:

The Court explicitly distinguished between the limited information discovered by use of the beeper—movements during a discrete journey—and more comprehensive or sustained monitoring of the sort at issue in this case....Most important for the present case, the Court specifically reserved the question whether a warrant would be required in a case involving twenty-four hour surveillance, stating, "if such dragnet-type law enforcement practices as respondent envisions should eventually occur, there will be time enough then to determine whether different constitutional principles may be applicable."

Ginsburg noted that the capabilities of modern tracking technology far outstrip what can feasibly be accomplished by human observers in public:

We hold the whole of a person's movements over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood a stranger would observe all those movements is not just remote, it is essentially nil. It is one thing for a passerby to observe or even to follow someone during a single journey as he goes to the market or returns home from work. It is another thing entirely for that stranger to pick up the scent again the next day and the day after that, week in and week out, dogging his prey until he has identified all the places, people, amusements, and chores that make up that person's hitherto private routine.

hmce@bellsouth.net	Click to e-mail
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Emergency radio upgrades will cost

BROADCAST CHANGE: Fire, rescue squads among those affected

By JIMMY LAWTON
JOHNSON NEWSPAPERS
MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2010

A new federal mandate requiring emergency radios be upgraded will cost some organizations — including volunteer fire departments and rescue squads — thousands of dollars.

"We basically just got a letter from emergency services saying we have to change broadcasts to narrow bands, which apparently means we are going to have to replace some of our radios and pagers," Waddington Rescue Squad Chief Irving Tomlins said.

Waddington's squad is among the smallest in St. Lawrence County, but Mr. Tomlins estimated the mandate from the Federal Communications Commission would cost his department $4,000.

"A new pager runs about $400, so if we have to replace ten, that's $4,000," he said.

Although the regulation will not take effect until Jan. 1, 2013, an initiative is under way by St. Lawrence County Emergency Services to prepare for the transition. In addition to cost concerns, St. Lawrence County's proximity to Canada means little frequency is left; Canada switched its systems years ago.

The FCC requirement says that all existing licensees must implement equipment designed to operate on channel bandwidths of 12.5 kHz or less or that meets a specific efficiency standard. All licensees will have to convert their wideband (25 kHz) systems to narrowband (12.5 kHz) operation. Any equipment that is not capable of operating on channels of 12.5 kHz or less will have to be replaced.

The FCC did not return calls seeking comment.

The purpose of the switch is to allow more users to communicate over the same amount of bandwidth. The move will require some highway departments, law enforcement agencies, fire departments, rescue squads and businesses to purchase new radios and pagers.

St. Lawrence County Director of Emergency Services Martin J. Hassett said radios purchased after 1995 will be compatible with the switch but will have to be reprogrammed, while any older equipment will have to be replaced.

"It is going to be a large impact," he said.

Eric S. Wehr, of Wells Communications, Troy, said a similar initiative was pushed by the FCC in 1995, but was delayed until 2013 because of cost concerns.

"They were going to try to institute it back then, but obviously there was a lot of adverse reaction in trying to replace radios," he said. "Over the last 12 years, the FCC has worked with manufacturers to make sure any radios made after that date can be converted to narrow band."

Mr. Hassett said a survey was sent to each fire and rescue squad throughout the county to determine the number of devices that will have to be replaced and it will be made available when it is complete.

Although the mandate is unfunded, Mr. Hassett said, departments will be encouraged to seek grants.

"What we are going to do is direct our departments to apply for firefighter grant programs, to provide new pagers that are compatible for narrowbanding," he said.

While Mr. Wehr said the FCC rule will benefit most of the country, the north country's proximity to Canada could prove to be problematic.

"In most of the country, frequency spectrum is a huge issue," he said. "Up here, we have not had any problems. Unfortunately, because we are within 150 miles of 80 percent of Canada's population, they have eaten up most of or all of the spectrum available, so it's not really helping us out at all."

Mr. Hassett said the Department of Emergency Services will have to work with the FCC and Canada's Department of Communications to re-coordinate frequencies.

"It's going to be a long process," he said.

Editor's Note: The July 16, 2010 issue of the newsletter covered Narrowbanding in depth. Please refer to that issue if you have any questions about how the FCC's Narrowbanding requirements affect Paging.

Aug 26, 2010 9:00 am

How schools are putting the iPad to work

Enterprising educators have big plans for Apple’s new tablet

by Joel Mathis, Macworld.com

David Woodbury got an early hint the iPad would be a big hit among the scholarly set.

When the Apple tablet went on sale to the public last spring, Woodbury ordered 30 for the libraries at North Carolina State University in Raleigh to be available for checkout by students and faculty. Demand was immediate and widespread.

“Literally, the hour we started [lending out iPads], we had students lining up to use them,” said Woodbury, NCSU’s Learning Commons Librarian.

That popularity is likely to increase this fall. Universities and schools around the nation—and even the world—are distributing iPads to students and faculty to start the new school year. Some are using the device to lure talented freshmen; others hope faculty and students will merely experiment with the tablet as a learning tool. But a few educators are betting the iPad will herald a revolution in the classroom, once-and-for-all displacing musty textbooks in favor of a mobile multimedia device that can engage students in new and innovative ways.

“I think we realize that at some point in the future, textbooks will be digital and that we’ll be using a device like the iPad in the classroom,” said George Saltsman, Director of Educational Technology for the Adams Center for Teaching and Learning at Abilene Christian University, where the device will be used in two classes this fall. “I don’t know that we’re ready to say that we’ll do that next year, but I do think that in five years all our students will be getting their texts digitally.”

Here are some examples of how educators are putting the iPad to work this year:

Recruiting tool George Fox University in Oregon has recruited students since 1991 by distributing computers and laptops to all incoming freshmen. Officials have considered dropping the expensive program in recent years. Instead, this year’s freshmen were given a choice: MacBook or iPad. About 70 students—10 percent of the incoming class—chose the tablet, which costs about half as much as the laptop ($499 versus $999 for the base models of each). Eventually, officials say, the iPad will be the only option—letting the school continue a popular program and save money at the same time.

“The reality of offering the iPad is that we’re going to kill the laptop piece of it,” said Greg Smith, the school's chief information officer. “The iPad will ease that blow.”

Incoming medical student Sarah Rooney receives an iPad during University of California at Irvine's White Coat Ceremony. (Photo ©2010 Paul R. Kennedy)

Catalyst for classroom participation At Abilene Christian—where the iPad is being distributed to 100 students in two pilot program classes—Dr. Ian Shepherd has designed his fall Econ 261 class to incorporate a digital textbook from McGraw-Hill, the Blackboard Learning Mobile app, as well as PDFs of supplemental texts. He’s perhaps most excited about the No Advance NOtice (NANO), an ACU-built assessment tool that lets him instantly quiz the entire class using polls, true-false questions and open-ended essay queries. He believes that tool will help him draw reticent students into classroom discussions. He’s taking aim at the “20-80 Rule”—the belief among educators that 20 percent of students dominate classroom time.

“With the device I have available, I can ensure participation from across the board,” Shepherd said. “I know there’s always going to be free riders, there’s always going to be someone there who had a bad night. What I’m hoping to do with the tools is flip that to an 80-20.”

Shoulder saver Cedars School of Excellence, a K-12 school near Glasgow, Scotland, is distributing iPads to all of its 105 students this fall. Fraser Speirs, who is supervising the project, is particularly excited about reducing the amount of paper students lug around.

There’s no immediate plan to use e-textbooks, he said, but homework will be assigned and collected through e-mail—and completed using Apple’s Pages software. “This is an issue, the amount of weight kids carry in backpacks,” Speirs said. “If it can all be crammed into an iPad, that’s a huge win right there.”

Computing with less distraction At another K-12 school—Hawaii Preparatory Academy in Kamuela—teacher Dr. Bill Wiecking said the app-oriented iPads are a safe way to bring computers to young students without leaving them at the unfettered mercy of the World Wide Web. If students jump onto the Web using Safari, he said, it’s easier for teachers to see. The flat tablet makes it harder to hide surreptitious surfing.

“In schools, I want to show people the world, but I want a net underneath them,” Wiecking said. “Maybe it’s the fact they can’t multitask on the iPad very well. When you tell them to go to a Website, you know they’re going to a Website. They’re not on Facebook or something.”

High hopes and hard-earned skepticism

Hawaii Preparatory Academy’s Wiecking might be the iPad’s most fervent educational proponent. He can reel off a list of apps his school will be using in the classroom: Star Walk for astronomy; Molecules for biology; iTranslate for language classes; SignalScope for physics classes—and so many more. Those apps, he said, allow students to do more than consume information. The iPad's pinch-and-zoom touchscreen will allow them interact with and manipulate it.

“It’s going to be our chance to change how we teach,” Wiecking said. “I’m so excited to be a teacher these days.”

Hawaii Preparatory Academy in Kamuela is experimenting with the iPad and many apps—Star Walk for astronomy; Molecules for biology; iTranslate for language classes; SignalScope for physics classes—that teachers hope will make learning more interactive.

But not everyone is quite so enthusiastic. Reed College in Oregon brought Amazon’s Kindle DX into its classrooms last fall for a much-touted experiment with e-textbooks. The experiment fizzled. Dr. Martin Ringle, Reed’s chief technology officer, said the Kindle’s lack of versatility and cumbersome navigation drove students back to traditional paper texts. (Read Reed’s Kindle DX Pilot Project report here.)

Now Reed is back, but cautiously, re-running the experiment with the iPad using a few dozen students in selected classes. Ringle expects that similar devices will be commonplace in classrooms in the next few years, but he tempers that optimism with hard-won realism—he claims a dusty Apple Newton among his possessions.

Similarly, Dr. Robert Paterson, vice president for information technology at Molloy College in New York, is one of those casting a skeptical eye. Hype rarely pans out in education technology, he said, which is why he doesn't understand why colleges like the Illinois Institute of Technology or Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania are handing out iPads to their incoming students.

“It seems like we’re putting the cart before the horse. Here’s a piece of hardware—figure out what you want to do with it,” Paterson said. “A lot of these devices folks have put out have a lot of hype and end up sitting in drawers.”

Will this time be different? The National Association of College Stores (NACS) expects e-books to grow from 2 percent of the textbook market now to 15 percent by 2012. Software developers are putting resources into an effort to ensure that iPad educational tools are more than just glorified PDF readers. But even among optimists, questions remain.

“There’s lots of speculation about the impact [of technology] on learning,” Reed's Ringle said. “That speculation isn’t necessarily grounded in empirical study. So we want students and faculty to have the devices in a live setting and see what they discover.”

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Time waits for no one: 'leap seconds' may be cut

By Joab Jackson at IDG News Service\New York Bureau
Mon Aug 23, 2010 8:18pm EDT

Sparking a fresh round of debate over an ongoing issue in time-keeping circles, the International Telecommunications Union is considering eliminating leap seconds from the time scale used by most computer systems, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Since their introduction in 1971, leap seconds have proved problematic for at least a few software programs. The leap second added on to the end of 2008, for instance, caused Oracle cluster software to reboot unexpectedly in some cases.

Some computer professionals argue, however, that abolishing the leap second at this point will just cause another set of difficulties. The revision "would cause more trouble than it naively claims to circumvent," wrote programmer Rob Seaman, on the Leap Seconds mailing list.

ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), which oversees UTC, is seeking input through October on a potentially revised definition of UTC that does not include leap seconds, an idea that has been under consideration for the past decade. If this working group approves the recommendation, it could go before the next ITU Radiocommunications Assembly in 2012 for final approval, and be implemented by 2018.

The leap second came about as a way to reconcile the growing difference between how computers and humans keep time.

UTC is defined by an iteration of seconds, which are defined with great precision by atomic clocks. Universal Time, in contrast, measures the day by the time it takes the Earth to do one complete rotation, which can fluctuate slightly due to tidal effects. Since 1971, 24 leap seconds have been added on to UTC in order to reconcile UTC and Universal Time.

In the revised ITU plan, the divergence between UTC and UT will be allowed to grow over the next few hundred years, and could be reconciled by a single leap hour at some point.

Most computer systems use UTC, including all those that rely on the Network Time Protocol (NTP). The problem, researchers note, is that leap seconds aren't handled in any sort of standardized way.

"A lack of inexpensive hardware and clock circuitry to correctly label a leap second has resulted in a variety of imaginatively nonstandard ways to represent UTC or zone time near a leap second, which may cause problems trying to synchronize computer clocks near leap seconds," write researchers David Finkleman, John Seago and Kenneth Seidelmann in the paper reviewing the debate, presented this month at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference held in Toronto this month.

For instance, Unix systems may adjust to the new time by setting their clocks back a second. This approach may "adversely affect," applications such as databases that record data in precise time intervals, the paper's authors assert.

Not everyone thinks eliminating the leap second as a good idea.

The revision "doesn't resolve the underlying geophysical issue or provide a future standards path to make the inevitable much larger and more intrusive adjustments to civil timekeeping that will be needed," Seaman wrote.

Other critics charged that the ITU has not sufficiently considered the effect this change would have on the software community itself, and noted that many systems have already been reconfigured to work with this quirk of time-keeping.

For instance, NTP itself can accommodate leap seconds by use of a parsable file of leap seconds that can be downloaded from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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From: Jeff Hutter
Subject: Trying to locate a Service manual
Date: August 20, 2010 12:32:53 PM CDT
To: Brad Dye

Brad,

We recently acquired some used CTI SF 65 digital/analog store and forward units and we are trying to locate a service manual so that we can hook them up and use them with our wide area Paging System. We would be glad to pay a reasonable charge for the manual and if no extras are available we would pay to have a copy made and mailed.

Anybody able to help us can reach me at the numbers below. THANKS!!

Jeff Hutter
TWR Communications
549 N. Centre St.
Cumberland, MD 21502
240-727-8579 cell
301-777-2692 ext 115 office
jeff.hutter@twrcommunications.com

Pager

A mother took her five-year-old son with her to the bank on a busy lunchtime. They got behind a very fat woman wearing a business suit complete with pager.

As they waited patiently, the little boy said loudly, “Gee she's fat!”

The mother bent down and whispered in the little boy's ear to be quiet.

A couple of minutes passed by and the little boy spread his hands as far as they would go and announced; “I'll bet her butt is this wide!”

The fat woman turns around and glares at the little boy.

The mother gave him a good telling off, and told him to be quiet.

After a brief lull, the large woman reached the front of the line.

Just then her pager begin to emit a beep, beep, beep.

The little boy yells out, “Run, she's backing up!”