The phone isn't working

Image from Pixabay

My grandparents' phone number was 1331. Those four digits were all you needed to reach them. If you called from further away, there was also the area code 04454.

In those days you knew the numbers of family and friends by heart. Other numbers were kept in a special telephone directory: you set a slider to the first letter of the surname, pressed a button and the thing popped open and showed a card with all the names and numbers that belonged to that letter. Handwritten.

At home we didn't have a telephone at all for a long time. You could live with that in the seventies. And the one time you really had to call someone, you knocked on the neighbours' door and gave them a quarter (of the old Dutch currency, the guilder). Or you went to the telephone box in the village. You needed quarters there too. Those were important coins. Too bad they don't exist anymore.

When we finally got a phone, four digits were still enough. Ours were 4006. PTT was the monopolist and everyone had the same device: the T65, with a rotary dial and a curly cord. It sat in the living room and if you were busy in the kitchen, with the door closed, you would sometimes miss a call. And you only knew that when the caller tried again later ("Weren’t you at home?"). That's why my parents had that same PTT install an extra bell in the hall. You paid rent for that, just like for the T65.

Many years later I bought – hesitantly – my first mobile phone. A Panasonic, with an antenna that stuck out about two centimeters above the device. The device had a small LCD display and physical keys. You could call and text with it. Compared to the T65, the number of functions was doubled. Wow!

Look where we are now. Almost everyone walks around all day with a computer in their pocket, which you also happen to be able to make phone calls with. This can be done in various ways. Via your SIM card (the old-fashioned way of calling, with a phone number of ten digits nowadays), but also – with or without live video – via other apps. You can even use it to hold meetings, as we know since the covid pandemic – if necessary with people in all corners of the world. Most people have thrown their landline out the door. Or never had one.

But what if all of that suddenly stops working? No one is reachable anymore, at least not by phone. You can only communicate with each other indirectly. By email or via chat apps. What impact would that have on our social and professional existence? Many subjects benefit from live interaction; if they have to be done via email, the 'conversation' can easily go the wrong way because one person misunderstands the other.

If telephony and video conferencing were to fail for a long time, we would undoubtedly go back to the office more often. Then it would be like it used to be: working from home for a maximum of one day. Everyone has their own personal preference, but I cherish working from home. One day a week in the pandemonium (and, admittedly, also joining in the chatter) is enough for me.

What do we do to prevent a company-wide blackout? Diversity plays a key role. In the Netherlands, there are three mobile networks (Vodafone, Odido (elsewhere still known as T Mobile) and KPN (the heir to PTT!)). All other providers piggyback on these networks. It is financially and from a management perspective attractive for organizations to place their telephony with one provider. But if something goes seriously wrong there, the entire organization immediately has a blackout. So it would be better to spread your chances. You should even make sure that the employees of a team are not all with the same provider. I see a nice administrative challenge…

But is it worth it? We never have long-term failures, do we? In the current climate, I no longer dare blindly assume that it will remain that way. There are strange forces at work in the world. At some point, those forces could benefit from a country becoming paralyzed. We would rather not think about that. And that is precisely why we have to do it.

 

And in the big bad world…

• The Atlantic 's editor-in-chief was invited to join a US government Signal group.
• This is the original article from The Atlantic about US plans to bomb the Houthis.
• Lower-ranking officials cannot afford to make mistakes like this one.
• SignalGate is not about Signal.
• Signal is benefiting from SignalGate.
• One of the SignalGate participants also leaked information on Venmo.
• Signal has a handy feature to prevent you from adding the wrong person.
• you can check if your online accounts have been hacked.
• An airport under attack can always switch to whiteboards.
• ChatGPT is addictive.
• Troy ‘Havibeenpwned’ Hunt is also not safe from phishing.
• the Dutch Government Cloud is one step closer. [DUTCH]