Pogue's 'Take Back The Beep' Campaign Better Late Than Never

David Pogue, columnist for the The New York Times has started a "Take Back the Beep" campaign aimed at pressuring cell-phone companies to stop those canned recordings callers hear when dialing other cell-phone users.

He's late with his campaign.

Pogue, in his Thursday Times column entitled, "Take Back the Beep Campaign," railed against U.S. cell-phone carriers' mandatory 15-second voicemail instructions.

He was referring to the message any of us might hear when calling someone's cell phone, such as the one when this reporter calls his colleague: "At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5."

Pogue wrote Thursday that cell-phone carriers purposely include these typically unnecessary messages as a way to keep callers on the line longer. Why? To make more money from airtime.

He cited the cell-phone industry's use of the message to increase carriers' ARPU, or Average Revenue Per User.

By his estimation, by leaving or checking messages twice a day from Monday through Friday, those 15-second messages could add up to $620 million a year for Verizon.

The big question is, why didn't Pogue tell us that before?

He could have actually started the "Take Back the Beep" campaign in July of 2007 when, by his own admission, he first heard of the concept at a conference in Italy.

Buried in the bottom of his report on that conference, in the last paragraph, he wrote, "At the conference, I asked one cellular executive if that message is deliberately recorded slowly and with as many words as possible, to eat up your airtime and make more ARPU for the cell carrier. I was half kidding—but he wasn't fooling around in his reply: 'Yes.'"

Oh well, better late than never.