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The Bell System dominated telecommunications in the United States and Canada for most of the twentieth century, but its monopoly was not inevitable. In the decades around 1900, ordinary citizens-farmers, doctors, small-town entrepreneurs-established tens of thousands of independent telephone systems, stringing their own wires to bring this new technology to the people. Managed by opportunists and idealists alike, these small businesses were motivated not only by profit but also by the promise of open communication as a weapon against monopoly capital and for protection of regional autonomy. As the Bell empire grew, independents fought fiercely to retain control of their local networks and companies-a struggle with an emerging corporate giant that has been almost entirely forgotten. The People's Networkreconstructs the story of the telephone's contentious beginnings, exploring the interplay of political economy, business strategy, and social practice in the creation of modern North American telecommunications. Drawing from government documents in the United States and Canada, independent telephone journals and publications, and the archives of regional Bell operating companies and their rivals, Robert MacDougall locates the national debates over the meaning, use, and organization of the telephone industry as a turning point in the history of information networks. The competing businesses represented dueling political philosophies: regional versus national identity and local versus centralized power. Although independent telephone companies did not win their fight with big business, they fundamentally changed the way telecommunications were conceived.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present theoretical and empirical arguments for the role of mobile telephony in promoting good governance in 47 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2000–2012. Design/methodology/approach The empirical inquiry uses an endogeneity-robust GMM approach with forward orthogonal deviations to analyze the linkage between mobile phone usage and the variation in three broad governance categories – political, economic and institutional. Findings Three key findings are established: first, in terms of individual governance indicators, mobile phones consistently stimulated good governance by the same magnitude, with the exception of the effect on the regulation component of economic governance. Second, when indicators are combined, the effect of mobile phones on general governance is three times higher than that on the institutional governance category. Third, countries with lower levels of governance indicators are catching-up with their counterparts with more advanced dynamics. Originality/value The study makes both theoretical and empirical contributions by highlighting the importance of various combinations of governance indicators and their responsiveness to mobile phone usage.

2024 marks not just CERN’s 70 th birthday but also the end of analogue telephony at the laboratory. Traditional phone exchanges and the associated copper cabling cannot deliver 21st-century communication services and a decade-long project to modernize CERN’s telephony infrastructure was completed earlier this year. We report here on CERN’s modern fixed telephony infrastructure, firstly our inhouse development of an exchange which, based on open-source components and standard VoIP protocols, supports softphones, call centres, safety communications, interconnections with other voice services and an automatic switchboard, and secondly the two CERNphone applications that have replaced fixed phones, and which are used by more than 6000 users each week.

\"This collection is one of the first in-depth studies of video calling in family and domestic life. It explores the reasons that people themselves provide to explain their video calling, investigates how these reasons make that calling accountable and how, in turn, these reasons come to be things talked about in the calls themselves. The research shows how video calling is part of the currency of contemporary family affection: such calls are not just about keeping in touch, they are a way of loving too; and they are sometimes a way of fighting as well. 'Skyping' or 'Facetiming' might be frequent and can seem mundane - just a question of routine - but what they entail is a measure of important things to families. This makes this collection of interest to anyone concerned with family life and the evolving ways in which technology has a role in it. Originally published as a special issue of Pragmatics 27:3 (2017)\"-- Provided by publisher.

Telephone triage is increasingly used to manage workload in primary care; however, supporting evidence for this approach is scarce. We aimed to assess the effectiveness and cost consequences of general practitioner-(GP)-led and nurse-led telephone triage compared with usual care for patients seeking same-day consultations in primary care. We did a pragmatic, cluster-randomised controlled trial and economic evaluation between March 1, 2011, and March 31, 2013, at 42 practices in four centres in the UK. Practices were randomly assigned (1:1:1), via a computer-generated randomisation sequence minimised for geographical location, practice deprivation, and practice list size, to either GP-led triage, nurse-led computer-supported triage, or usual care. We included patients who telephoned the practice seeking a same-day face-to-face consultation with a GP. Allocations were concealed from practices until after they had agreed to participate and a stochastic element was included within the minimisation algorithm to maintain concealment. Patients, clinicians, and researchers were not masked to allocation, but practice assignment was concealed from the trial statistician. The primary outcome was primary care workload (patient contacts, including those attending accident and emergency departments) in the 28 days after the first same-day request. Analyses were by intention to treat and per protocol. This trial was registered with the ISRCTN register, number ISRCTN20687662. We randomly assigned 42 practices to GP triage (n=13), nurse triage (n=15), or usual care (n=14), and 20 990 patients (n=6695 vs 7012 vs 7283) were randomly assigned, of whom 16 211 (77%) patients provided primary outcome data (n=5171 vs 5468 vs 5572). GP triage was associated with a 33% increase in the mean number of contacts per person over 28 days compared with usual care (2·65 [SD 1·74] vs 1·91 [1·43]; rate ratio [RR] 1·33, 95% CI 1·30–1·36), and nurse triage with a 48% increase (2·81 [SD 1·68]; RR 1·48, 95% CI 1·44–1·52). Eight patients died within 7 days of the index request: five in the GP-triage group, two in the nurse-triage group, and one in the usual-care group; however, these deaths were not associated with the trial group or procedures. Although triage interventions were associated with increased contacts, estimated costs over 28 days were similar between all three groups (roughly £75 per patient). Introduction of telephone triage delivered by a GP or nurse was associated with an increase in the number of primary care contacts in the 28 days after a patient's request for a same-day GP consultation, with similar costs to those of usual care. Telephone triage might be useful in aiding the delivery of primary care. The whole-system implications should be assessed when introduction of such a system is considered. Health Technology Assessment Programme UK National Institute for Health Research.

National and subnational level surveys are important for monitoring disease burden, prioritizing resource allocation, and evaluating public health policies. As mobile phone access and ownership become more common globally, mobile phone surveys (MPSs) offer an opportunity to supplement traditional public health household surveys. The objective of this study was to systematically review the current landscape of MPSs to collect population-level estimates in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Primary and gray literature from 7 online databases were systematically searched for studies that deployed MPSs to collect population-level estimates. Titles and abstracts were screened on primary inclusion and exclusion criteria by two research assistants. Articles that met primary screening requirements were read in full and screened for secondary eligibility criteria. Articles included in review were grouped into the following three categories by their survey modality: (1) interactive voice response (IVR), (2) short message service (SMS), and (3) human operator or computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI). Data were abstracted by two research assistants. The conduct and reporting of the review conformed to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. A total of 6625 articles were identified through the literature review. Overall, 11 articles were identified that contained 19 MPS (CATI, IVR, or SMS) surveys to collect population-level estimates across a range of topics. MPSs were used in Latin America (n=8), the Middle East (n=1), South Asia (n=2), and sub-Saharan Africa (n=8). Nine articles presented results for 10 CATI surveys (10/19, 53%). Two articles discussed the findings of 6 IVR surveys (6/19, 32%). Three SMS surveys were identified from 2 articles (3/19, 16%). Approximately 63% (12/19) of MPS were delivered to mobile phone numbers collected from previously administered household surveys. The majority of MPS (11/19, 58%) were panel surveys where a cohort of participants, who often were provided a mobile phone upon a face-to-face enrollment, were surveyed multiple times. Very few reports of population-level MPS were identified. Of the MPS that were identified, the majority of surveys were conducted using CATI. Due to the limited number of identified IVR and SMS surveys, the relative advantages and disadvantages among the three survey modalities cannot be adequately assessed. The majority of MPS were sent to mobile phone numbers that were collected from a previously administered household survey. There is limited evidence on whether a random digit dialing (RDD) approach or a simple random sample of mobile network provided list of numbers can produce a population representative survey.