Modern Day Party Line

I was talking to someone using my celphone the other day. We were having an active conversation (meaning our sentences were almost overlapping) when suddenly the voice I was hearing over the phone became of one who spoke Bisaya. Now the person I was originally talking to did not know how to speak any of the local dialects, only English and Filipino. But suddenly, without warning of any kind, the voice I heard over the phone became that of a Bisaya, speaking rapidly and with a very thick accent. Needless to say, I was totally bewildered. I just kept on saying, “Hello? Hello?” I couldn’t help laughing each time I heard the voice speak because I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. It was a little surreal actually. After a while, the voice realized that the person he had now on the other end of his line couldn’t understand him, so he just said in a very exasperated way, “Ay, ambot sa imo” and ended the connection. When I called by friend back, he said the exact same thing happened to him, only he thought I had just passed the phone to another person with me.

I’ve heard of people (and even had some personal experience with) calling a friend but were surprised that the line connected to another person’s number, such that the phone indicates that the correct number was reached, but the person they were actually talking to was not the person intended. My experience was I called a friend who was in Bicol at that time. My phone indicated that I was calling him, and when the timer started, indicating that I had connected to his phone, an old lady speaking Bicolano answered. I thought originally it was an aunt, picking up his phone for whatever reason. But as it turns out, she was a lady completely unrelated to my friend. What made the story even funnier was when I redialed my friend’s number (and reaching the correct person this time), he told me that my number flashed on his screed, indicating that I was calling, but when he answered, a guy speaking in Bicolano was on the other line. Apparently, the server distributing the data and connecting the lines mixed up the calls, and switched the parties being called.

It was like going back to the days of party lines and wrong numbers, only this time it’s with celphones. I can’t pretend to understand how the technical aspect of the celphone world goes, but it is obvious that the service has been becoming less and less reliable recently, and the technical part of the service, faulty. Is this not part of the issues the regulatory agency should address? Isn’t the service provided by the telecom industry a regulated public service? I know this particular experience is a funny one, and not worth going irate over, but if this isn’t remedied soon, we might just go back to the dark ages of technology as we know it.

11th