Scott Adams: Wireless Voice Calls are Obsolete

Firstly, let's truncate this list:

1. Either one of you have a weak signal.

2. Either one of you are using an earpiece or headset.

3. The other person has a cell phone (delay problem).

4. Either one of you are multitasking and can't think.

5. Either one of you are in a noisy environment, such as Earth.

6. Either one of you get another call you have to take.

7. Either one of you have a dying battery.

8. Either one of you have a phone that drops calls for no good reason.

9. Either one of you are in a restaurant and isn't a jerk.

10. There is a child within 100 yards of either of you.

While each of these gripes are very legitimate, I don't think that they indicate the bell tolling for the end of wireless voice calling. It's very obvious that they both have their uses.

Voice calls work best when the environment is well suited for it: quiet place, clear signal, and lots of time/minutes to use. SMS is better for very short exchanges, keeping a record of conversations, or when your signal is unreliable(i.e. the other guy knows exactly what I said or doesn't, shouting through static doesn't help), or when speaking on a cell phone simply isn't appropriate(i.e. library).

Sorry Scott, but I have to disagree.

A lot of the voice quality problems can be attributed to forcing cellphones to route through the PSTN[1] which is 8bit u-law 8kHz audio. That's a huge stretch from CD-quality audio--it used to be presumed the minimum required for voice to be understandable, and besides the u-law encoding, it's uncompressed. You would get much better audio quality by recording voice at a higher sampling rate and encoding it as a 64kbps MP3, which is the same bitrate as the PSTN and trivial for cellphone hardware to do; however, cellphones have to be able to call landlines and other cellphones, and the common point of connectivity (and so the lowest common denominator) is the PSTN. VoIP can use even better audio compression algorithms that result in audio quality far superior to anything you'd hear through the PSTN. For instance, this is why many reviewers of FaceTime report that activating it makes the audio quality of their call noticeably better, on top of all the niceties of the video stream.

It's not just humans that have trouble hearing at 8kHz 8-bit u-law--voice transcription software is remarkably more accurate when using a microphone on a computer recording at 44kHz 16-bit compared to over the phone. This is part of the reason, for instance, Google Voice transcription is nowhere near as effective as Dragon Naturally Speaking on your laptop, and never will be.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_netwo...

"For important calls, I use a land line that serves as my fax line. If I receive a call on my cellphone, I try to keep it short, or I call back from my fax line."

Why aren't faxes obsolete? Over 10 years since President Clinton e-signed the e-signature law into place. About 150 years since the first e-signature (over telegraph). Seems like an opportunity missed here.

"In my life, voice calls using cellphones fail more often than they succeed"

Well, thank God I don't live in the desolate wasteland that he does. I haven't had a problem with voice calls in years.

Weak signal seems very much like an American problem.

"The worst offenders are the people in cars who don't have satellite radio, or books on tape, and they're just calling to make their drive less boring."

This, of course, triggers about half the list. Noisy environment, makes phones drop calls, sporadic week signals, and of course the other person is now multitasking.

The loss of these would be the perk of cell phone bans for drivers.

I hate phone calls, unless they are pre-arranged. Send me an email so you don't interrupt my train of thought.

I haven't had a dropped call in years (on Sprint).

The problem with text messages is that you can't actually have a conversation. For example I just had a conversation with a friend of mine about the MIT network flow algorithm. Given the rapid and back and forth, the call lasted about 15 minutes. A text stream of the same content would have taken days. The real result is likely that one of us would probably have decided to simply stop responding.

So funny, and so true: "When I get a text alert, it always makes me happy, even before I read the message. When my phone rings, I think, Uh-oh, what fresh hell is this?"

The biggest reason I hate voice calls is that they're random and surprising. I like to be ready for them. Texting, email, instant messages let me reply to them when I can or when I'd like to get to them.

Also, rather than say texting is better, as a CrackBerry user I'll call out BlackBerry Messenger as a much better alternative.

Some of the richest most productive calls I have ever made have been landline to landline. Talking cell to cell can be atrocious when you factor in delay, reception, and input issues but I would take those any day over trying to type on a tiny keyboard. It's a waste of time. Occasionally I use aim to send texts but to me that's more like messaging than texting.

He must be on AT&T.

I don't have these problems.

Just hold it differently!

Edit: I guess I have to explain. Probability that a celebrity has an iPhone 4: 99%. iPhone 4 has known reception problems if you hold it wrong. Scott Adams complains about bad reception on his mobile phone. Therefore it seems probable that if he would hold it differently (or get a better phone), his complaints would be moot.