Telephone Usage Research Articles

The Effects of Television Advertising on Local Telephone Usage: Exploratory Data Analysis and Response Modeling

In increasingly competitive and deregulated service environments, telecommunications service providers are interested in using advertising to stimulate usage. Measuring response in telephone usage to advertising presents difficulties because the effects are likely to be small, and the usage exhibits high variability. The substantive question of whether advertising has any effect on telephone usage is addressed through a systematic analytical process that combines exploratory data analysis with formal modeling. We find that telephone usage does respond to advertising, that this response can be quantified, and that households with heavy usage of telephone service respond proportionally more than light usage households.

Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avante-Garde ed. by Douglas Kahn, Gregory Whitehead

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 425 To provide perspective on what the telephone did and did not do, the examination of the telephone is paralleled by a less detailed survey of the historical diffusion of the automobile. This is a meaningful comparison, for both can be seen as examples of space-compressing technologies that gained widespread acceptance, although at different rates of adoption (it is rather surprising to read that, during the late 1920s and the 1930s, working-class families were much more likely to have cars than to have telephones). At the same time, the car and the telephone represented potentially competing technologies, as illustrated by the absolute drop in rural telephone installation during the 1930s, a time when automobile ownership remained constant. By considering the two in tandem, Fischer is able to note the parallel and the separate reasons for their appeal, as well as the different sources of the resistance they encountered. Although it is impossible to reconstruct with complete accuracy how technologies were used and perceived decades ago, America Callinggives us a convincing picture ofhow a particular technologybecame part ofeveryday life. Readers expecting a narrative ofvast social and cultural changes flowing from telephone usage will be disappointed, but those willing to accept a more complex exposition will find in America Calling a model for future studies of the interaction of technology and other sources of change. Rudi Voi.ti Dr, Voi.ti is professor of sociology at Pitzer College and the author of Society and Technological Change (New York, 1992). Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avante-Garde. Edited by Doug­ las Kahn and Gregory Whitehead. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992. Pp. xi+452; notes, index. $35.00. The essays assembled by Douglas Kahn and GregoryWhitehead in Wireless Imaginationare fascinating and frustrating. Fascinatingbecause they open up for exploration a realm ofculture too long neglected by scholars, the realm ofsound. Frustrating because the analyses included here do not consider as fully as they might the various technologies that inspired and generated the sounds created by the artists whose work is considered. Wireless Imagination is presented by its editors as a “collection of first utterances” whose goal is to begin to chart this unexplored culture of the acoustic, to break “the deafening silence surrounding sound” (p. xi). The project begins not at any identifiable cultural center, but self-consciously at the margins, with the avant-garde. Raymond Roussel, Marcel Duchamp, Antonin Artaud,John Cage, and William S. Burroughs are among the disparate souls—sculptors, writers, and musicians— who reflected on the meaning and purpose of sounds and then manipulated them to examine deeper questions about mankind, lan­ guage, and identity. Their various acoustic experiments, performances, 426 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and writings are considered by the art historians, literary critics, and performing artists who contributed to this volume. Essays range from analyses of literary texts to interpretations of visual art and musical performances to simple catalogs of artists and their works. A few primary documents are also included, some appearing in English for the first time. Most satisfying are Mark Cory’s account of German radio art, as well as the essays by Frances Dyson and Robin Lydenberg which treat, respectively, the works of Cage and Burroughs. These three authors describe how their subjects perceived and realized new artistic possibilities in the acoustic technologies of broadcast radio, recording studio, and tape recorder. Even these studies, however, would have been enriched by a fuller examination of the technologies employed. Too often, technology is accepted as a preexistent given, rather than as a transformable and transforming artifact of human processes. Technology enables the new art, but the art of technology is seldom evident. An undercurrent of determinism is even apparent at times, as when Kahn, in the editor’s introduction, refers to the “inevitable march of technological devices” (p. 9). This criticism is intended, not primarily to censure the authors, but instead to encourage historians of technology to take up this material and add their voices to the dialogue begun in this volume. A firm foundation exists in the works of authors like Hugh Aitken and Susan Douglas, but there remain vast unexplored areas in the social, cultural, and...

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 by Claude S. Fischer

424 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. By Claude S. Fischer. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xv+424; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, in­ dex. $25.00. In recent years, most sociological studies of technology have at­ tempted to show how specific technologies have been shaped by socioeconomic conditions. Considerably less fashionable is the intellec­ tual tradition that takes the opposite tack by seeking to understand the social consequences of particular technologies. Although thejury is still out on the value of the social-constructivist method, America Calling demonstrates the value of the latter approach. In presenting a socio­ logically informed history of the telephone in America up to 1940, Claude Fischer pursues two general objectives. The first is to gain an empirically based understanding of how the telephone affected social and personal life. The second is considerably more ambitious, for it seeks to use the social history of the telephone as a means of gaining insight into that most elusive of concepts: “modernity.” The author’s general orientations are presented in the opening chapter, an excellent review of contemporary thinking about technol­ ogy and modern life. This chapter raises the key issue developed in the body of the book, the relationship between technological and sociopsychological change, while at the same time noting the methodological pitfalls inherent in any study of so vast a theme. America Calling rises to the challenge, for its underlying methodology is both deep and broad. To gain an understanding of the consequences of telephone use in the United States, Fischer and his research associates consulted archival sources, censuses and other surveys, and contemporary publications. A tighter focus was attained by an intensive study of three northern California towns through an examination of local newspapers, tele­ phone and city directories, and interviews with longtime residents. One of the major conclusions of the study is that there was no “technological imperative” determining how the telephone was used; the employment of the telephone strongly reflected the needs and intentions of its users. To take one example, while the industry’s management at first discouraged the use of the telephone for social calls, by the mid- 1920s it not only bowed to the inevitable but also began to use “sociability” as a key marketing theme. Reinforcing this view of the telephone as something less than a technological juggernaut, Fischer finds that it did not fundamentally change patterns of social interaction. Taking issue with numerous commentators who have seen in the telephone an instrument of delocalization, Fischer finds that, far from becoming rootless cosmopolitans, people maintained their local social connections, using the telephone for precisely this purpose. Telephone use expanded the social networks of many people, but not at the expense of local ones. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 425 To provide perspective on what the telephone did and did not do, the examination of the telephone is paralleled by a less detailed survey of the historical diffusion of the automobile. This is a meaningful comparison, for both can be seen as examples of space-compressing technologies that gained widespread acceptance, although at different rates of adoption (it is rather surprising to read that, during the late 1920s and the 1930s, working-class families were much more likely to have cars than to have telephones). At the same time, the car and the telephone represented potentially competing technologies, as illustrated by the absolute drop in rural telephone installation during the 1930s, a time when automobile ownership remained constant. By considering the two in tandem, Fischer is able to note the parallel and the separate reasons for their appeal, as well as the different sources of the resistance they encountered. Although it is impossible to reconstruct with complete accuracy how technologies were used and perceived decades ago, America Callinggives us a convincing picture ofhow a particular technologybecame part ofeveryday life. Readers expecting a narrative ofvast social and cultural changes flowing from telephone usage will be disappointed, but those willing to accept a more complex exposition will find in America Calling a model for future studies of the interaction of technology and other sources of change. Rudi Voi.ti Dr...

Is It Really Just Like a Fancy Answering Machine? Comparing Semantic Networks of Different Types of Voice Mail Users

We propose a conceptual as well as practical distinction, possible in voice mail systems, betweenthe traditional telephone genre of voice answering and a new genre of telephone communicationof voice messaging. This distinction should be reflected in comments provided by respondentswho report that they use voice mail more for messaging than for answering, and by those whosend more voice messages than do others. Semantic network analysis identified differentclusters of concepts found in responses to open-ended questions on a survey completed by thesekinds of users. For example, all users had common word clusters concerning the ability toovercome temporal constraints and leave messages through voice mail. However, responses of"senders" and "messagers" included word clusters such as "group distribution" and greaterconcern with issues such as critical mass and problems of traditional telephone usage (suchas busy signals), while responses of low senders and answerers included clusters indicatingconcern about the impersonal nature of voice mail. We discuss implications both for thismethod of analysis as well as for implementation and management of voice mail systems.

A model for studying the implications of price-cap regulation of local telephone services

This paper presents a modeling approach to investigate the practical implications of price-caps for regulating local telephone prices. The model incorporates a stochastic customer choice component, a deterministic pricing component, and a price-cap regulatory component patterned after the Federal Communications Commission's price-cap model. Simulations illustrate the interplay among these components. The analysis is based on input data drawn from 3 months of actual local telephone usage for nearly 2000 households in Ohio. The hypothetical price-cap rule considered in the example is applied to a market basket consisting of the pricing elements for basic local residential telephone services. These price elements are for measured, message and flat rate local calling. The analyses show whether or not prices are currently at Ramsey prices, and how prices change if the telephone company seeks to maximize profits. The impact of the price changes on various demographic groups is presented. A graphic display shows the strength of the economic incentive for the company to operate more efficiently under the hypothetical price-cap rule.

Estimating telephone usage elasticities: a shares equation system approach

A model of the demand for long-distance telephone usage is presented where own-price and cross-price elasticities for time-of-day (TOD) usage are estimated using customer-specific information. In particular, a customer choice model is estimated to predict individual customer budget shares for TOD usage conditioned on prices, expenditures (bills) and socio-economic characteristics. A logistic functional form in the budget shares is assumed for estimation, which leads to the multinomial logit model specification in a probabilistic context. From this specification, elasticities can be derived that are theoretically consistent with a demand system. The model is estimated using data from Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. The model's parameter estimates can be used to derive customer-specific price elasticities which can predict customers’ telephone usage shifts between rate periods due to tariff changes. Understanding how customers’ usage shifts when prices change in valuable information for market and network planning in the telecommunications industry.

Phone phobia, phact or phantasy?: An operant approach to a child's disruptive behavior induced by telephone usage

The clinical efficacy of a contingency management program for treating a developmentally disabled girl referred for telephone phobia was evaluated using both a multiple baseline across settings design and a reversal design. A descriptive analysis indicated that the ‘phobia’ was in all probability an operant, rather than a respondent. The treatment, consisting of differential reinforcement, extinction and time-out, was effective in reducing the frequency and intensity of disruptive behaviors in response to telephone usage. Follow-up assessments at 1, 3, and 6 months revealed that treatment gains were maintained.

Forecasting international ISDN requirements

A method for estimating international ISDN capabilities and service requirements from the telephone usage patterns of “leading edge” business is introduced and illustrated.

Mobilizing opinion: Achieving results

Among the more promising developments to emerge from the so-called ‘lost eighties’ are grassroots organizations committed to empowering the poor and the hungry in developing and industrialized countries alike. Results, an international citizens' lobby, has combined sophisticated telephone usage and concerted small-group activity to generate editorial opinion in the print media and to influence legislative and budgetary policy. The approach meshes two seemingly contradictory trends — localized public participation and global interdependence.

On the telephone again! Differences in telephone behaviour: England versus Greece

ABSTRACTThis article investigates differences in telephone behaviour in England and Greece in the light of Brown and Levinson's model of interaction. It focusses upon differences both in verbal telephone call behaviour and in the attitudes and values attached to telephone usage. Explanations are placed within a broad framework of cultural differences in the preferred interactional strategies of the two societies. (Sociolinguistics, culturally determined variations in telephone behaviour, politeness phenomena, Greece versus England)

Women and Technology: A Case Study of the Telephone in Australia

Why has the study of the telephone been marginal? How is telephone usage tied up with gender issues and the trivialisation of 'the voice of women'? How do Australian women, according to data from the first ever qualitative/survey study of their telephone habits, use the telephone and what are the implications for the family, for the timed local calls notion, for a large slice of Telecom's constituency?

Telephone Speech Comprehension with Use of the Nucleus Cochlear Implant

The reported telephone usage by cochlear implant recipients has become a major issue of controversy. Although patients and clinicians report good communication skills via the telephone, no standardized tests have been used and no quantifiable results have been reported. In an effort to determine the extent to which our better-performing patients can use the telephone, we established a clinical protocol to assess their ability to recognize speech, taking into consideration the problems inherent in telephone testing. Eight cochlear implant recipients were administered the NU-6 Monosyllabic Word Test and the City University of New York Topic Related Sentences under the following listening conditions: soundfield in a soundproof suite and via telephone within the hospital, locally, and long-distance. Twenty-three percent of the patients implanted at New York University Medical Center demonstrated a significant degree of telephone communication ability.

THE FEMININE CULTURE OF THE TELEPHONE. PEOPLE, PATTERNS AND POLICY

Few detailed studies have been made in any country of telephone usage. This paper reports a qualitative national study of 200 women, metropolitan and country, which embraces women of diverse conditions and ages across Australia. It presents evidence of a deeply entrenched, caring, feminine culture of the telephone which underlies our family, community, and national development. Importantly, it conveys the voices and attitudes of women to a communication technology which, locally and internationally, is undergoing policy change. At a time when a ‘new telecommunications framework’ is being considered in Australia, the data challenge traditional ‘malestream’ conceptions of telephone usage and telecommunications policy, and focus the point that women and men make significantly different use of, and have very different access to, decision-making about technology.

Service needs of community and institution-based older persons with a developmental handicap in Alberta, Canada

Older persons (age 45 and older) with a developmental handicap residing in either community or institutional settings were compared for their current use of and need for social and habilitative services. These comparisons were based on data arising from a province-wide survey of older developmentally handicapped individuals (n=742). Although there was a disproportionate representation of all individuals in the institutional environment (56.5%), those residing within congregate care settings in the community (i.e., within lodges, extended care centres, nursing homes and auxiliary hospitals) demonstrated significantly higher frequencies of health impairments (e.g., obesity, edema, paralysis, and musculoskeletal and neurological impairments). In the area of independence capacity skills (i.e., banking, laundry, public transportation, shopping, telephone usage, and meal preparation), those individuals involved in community-based vocational, residential, or other programs coordinated by associations or Social Services, were significantly more skilled than those individuals involved in either institutional or community-based congregate care facilities. Similarly, the former were more competent in self care skills such as grooming and dressing. Overall involvement in activity or leisure programs was greatest for community environments. Correspondingly, access to and involvement with professional services was greatest in the community, as was involvement in social and familial relationships. An analysis of stated and perceived needs for current and future services was also conducted. These results were discussed in the context of future program design for this population.

Computer Chips and Paper Clips: Technology and Women’s Employment ed. by Heidi I. Hartmann, et al

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews—Labor and Technology 939 Computer Chips and Paper Clips: Technology and Women’s Employment. Edited by Heidi I. Hartmann, Robert E. Kraut, and Louise A. Tilly. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986. Pp. xvii + 216; tables, bibliography, index. $19.95 U.S./Canada/Mexico; $24.00 out­ side North America (paper). Computer Chips and Paper Clips is a National Research Council report on the effects of technological change on women’s employment. Be­ cause so many women are employed in clerical work, it focuses on change in those occupations; and because so much of the recent tech­ nological change affecting this work can be classed as “information technology,” or computers and telecommunications, it focuses on the effect of computerization on clericaljobs. The bulk of the book is eco­ nomic and sociological rather than historical, but the authors are con­ cerned with the historical context of their study: they devote a chapter to “Historical Patterns of Technological Change,” and throughout the book they present data covering several decades to illustrate the trends discussed. The authors conclude that because men and women have been and are still treated differently in the labor market, technological change will affect them differently. But they suggest that the issues they address are relevant to other occupations, other technologies, and other groups in society. The overall implication is that generalizations can be made about “technological change” wherever it appears. Chapter 2, “Historical Patterns of Technological Change,” presents five case studies of “the effects of innovation on women’s occupations” for the purpose ofusing “history as a guide for understanding the com­ plex relationship of technological change and women’s employment” (p. 24). The first case, “The Telephone and Telephone Operators,” skims the introduction and early development of telephone usage and then discusses the development of the job of telephone operator, one which was early pegged as appropriate for women rather than men or boys. Next, “Workers in Printing and Publishing” focuses on typeset­ ting technology and the competition, throughout the history of the oc­ cupation, between men and women for printingjobs. The third case, “The Automated Office and Its Workers,” is subdivided into discus­ sions about secretaries, accountants and bookkeepers, insurance clerks, and banktellers, and dwells mostly on changes since the advent ofcom­ puterization. “Retail Clerks” traces changes in the retail industry in the 20th century and the attendant transition from thejob of salesperson to the (feminized)job of cashier. This case, like the first, is particularly useful because it explores (if briefly) pre-computer history. The last case, “Nurses and Nursing,” is again most concerned with computer­ ization and recent developments in medical technology. The value of this book for historians of technology lies not so much in its historical content as in the more general issues it raises. Many of these questions are as integral to historical investigations of technology 940 Book Reviews—Labor and Technology TECHNOLOCY AND CULTURE in society as to contemporary and projective, predictive ones. The au­ thors, however, represent a variety of disciplines, and the historian is often left wishing for a more detailed analysis ofhistorical context. The authors confront the problem of defining potentially ambiguous terms, such as “technology” and “clerical work,” and they confront questions about the uniqueness of any one technological innovation, such as the telephone or the microprocessor. They also ask questions about tech­ nology in a broader social context: How does one distinguish techno­ logical factors from other economic or social factors in evaluating an aspect of societal change? How much of a particular technological “ef­ fect” could alternatively be ascribed to a technological or organiza­ tional choice, determined by the people making decisions and not by the technology at all? And then who makes those decisions? Although asked, these questions tend to be answered open-endedly. The authors conclude that “technology can be implemented in both job-enriching and job-degrading ways” and that “any technology can be used in a number of ways and that social choices about its use are genuine” (p. 150). In an examination of social policy, the determination that these questions cannot be answered definitively is more important than an exploration of the ways...

On the Accuracy of Forecasting Telephone Usage Demand

This paper examines the accuracy of telephone-usage-demand forecasts produced by three state-of-the-art forecasting techniques: Box-Jenkins, Akaike state space, and an autoregressive spectrum estimation. The study considers 35 actual monthly demand time series and 300 simulated realizations. Principal results are that: (1) correct identification of the nonstationary behavior of telephone demand is crucial to forecast performance, (2) overparameterization or underparameterization of the stationary aspects of a process has little or no impact on the accuracy of the forecast, and (3) forecasts based on the naive random-walk method compare favorably to those produced by sophisticated techniques. Also, strengths and weaknesses of the investigated techniques are revealed through data analysis. It is further argued that the traditional method for assessing the accuracy of the usage forecast based on average busy season quantities is biased towards underforecasting.

Telephone communication for the deaf.

The deaf currently communicate over the telephone network through the use of teletypes or CRT terminals. These aids, while of great benefit to individuals so equipped, do not permit communication with persons not owning special equipment. A device presented here provides telephone communication for the deaf without requiring special equipment at the hearing party's location. The aid operates via tones received from a standard Touch Tone (TM) telephone which greatly expands potential telephone usage for the deaf.

The Effect of the Demographics of Individual Households on their Telephone Usage.

The Effect of the Demographics of Individual Households on their Telephone Usage.

Dichotic lateral asymmetry: The effects of grammatical structure and telephone usage

No confirmation could be obtained that the magnitude of the dichotic REA for speech is affected by whether the stimuli are syntactically structured. Recall-order was controlled in Experiment 1 by cueing one ear immediately after a dichotic stimulus; in Experiment 2 by cueing before a stimulus. The subject's reported ear preference for telephone usage was correlated with his ear difference in the first experiment but not in the second. Perhaps telephone usage causes an attentional bias (for speech) to one or other ear, more often to the right; which is over-ridden by the precued instruction to attend to a particular ear.

Information Retrieval Based on Touch-Tone® Encoded Alphanumeric Keys

Usage of the Touch-Tone telephone as a computer input device has increased dramatically during the past five years. The recent decrease in cost and increase in intelligibility of synthetic voice systems has made it possible to couple voice response systems with Touch-Tone telephones to create a low-cost, highly flexible computer terminal. However, usage is primarily restricted to applications that can be accomplished with a limited character set, do not need an extensive user protocol, consist of relatively short interactive sessions, and do not require immediate hard copy feedback. This paper discusses the first of these limitations: the unambiguous representation of 26 letters, 10 digits, and several special characters by the 12 keys of a Touch-Tone keyboard. Existing input schemes often require multiple keying to represent a single alphanumeric character or table look-up of numeric codes to represent a message. An alternative scheme would permit as-is encoding of alphabetic information. Using a specific application, as-is encoding is examined in detail, and the theory for recognition of encoded English phrases is generalized by two algorithms.