Where I live (in Washington State), there is a television advertisement for a local all-you-can-eat buffet. It opens with a video of a waiter saying "Hi, I'm Bob, may I take your order", and then cuts to a video of the buffet with a voice-over "Here at [], there's no Bob to come between you and your food".

However crummy your product, you have to make its distinguishing characteristic a sales point. Even if it seems upside down to the rest of the world.

In response to Dan Ryan (did you know there's an expressway in Chicago named the Dan Ryan?), I've seen that commercial and it is for a fairly nationwide chain, although not all the restaurants operate under the same name. And I can assure you that for some people (myself, for one), the fact that there is "no Bob" is a very definite selling point. Because, you see, when I go out I want to eat, not wait for the food to show up, and I want to pick out the food that looks appealing to me, not have someone back in the kitchen deciding which portion I should get. The proof is in the puddng (no pun intended); where I live that is one of the most popular restaurants in the area, so much so that a strong competitor has just decided to enter the market. Whereas, a well-known regional chain that operated in the traditional manner, even though they attempted to become more "family friendly", still went belly-up about a year ago.

And that brings me to the point that not everyone thinks that digital is superior. There are probably a lot of people who have used digital cell phones, and suffered complete loss of signal, or digital satellite TV, and have suffered heavy pixellation or loss of signal (especially during heavy rain) that if they have only a basic concept of the difference between analog and digital, may well conclude that analog is better. Remember, especially insofar as television is concerned, with analog if the signal gets a little weak you can probably still make out what's going on. With digital, you just suddenly lose the program altogether, or get unintelligible snippets of picture and sound. That is not significant in a medium where signal strength isn't generally a consideration (that is, the Internet) but some people may not understand the difference well enough, and may indeed think that analog is better.

On the other hand, this is probably also false advertising, because I doubt that any call is truly analog. It might be for the customer loop portion, but you can probably bet that their switches are digital and that every single call placed through thir company is digital for at least part of the way. Perhaps a letter to the Federal Trade Commission or the FCC, or their state's consumer rotection agency might be in order!

I have to tell you, I appreciate digital telephony as much as anyone, but I do have a soft spot for the old days of truly analog telephony, when you could dial numbers and listen to the switches chatter and the in-band signalling tones being sent across the network. THAT was analog. And for the most part, that simply doesn't exist anymore.