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Verizon's Solution to Terrorism: Eliminate Verizon Competitors
The New York Times has an article about Verizon lobbying for rate increases and to remove all requirements that Verizon provide telecom services to competitors, claiming that being a large, sluggish monopoly is somehow advantageous in responding to disasters, although Verizon hasn't managed to restore phone and data service in large areas of Manhattan yet. In a related story, an association of small ISPs has surveyed its members and come to the revelation that the Bells are stifling competition.
God, Verizon is pretty much the equivilant of Microsoft now, but not as powerful. I can't stand that company, and espically the way they control the DSL in my area. Pay about 40 dollars a month for 640/90 where I can get 6000/1000 cable for 30, they really need to shape up, I'd like a nice dsl line...
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have a sig.
It doesn't mean that Verizon is right in wanting to squash all competition, but there are things called natural monopolies.
Your electric company is one. Water services.
I don't know what anyone else in the US is going through, but here in NJ, the electric company (PSE&G - Park, Sleep, Eat, & Go Home) for all their faults, works. My electricity is reliable as can be. And when it does fail, they're out here _immediately_ to fix it!
Natural monopolies, as long as there's oversight and consumer protection, can work.
In fact, sometimes it's BETTER to have a monopoly than not. Look at the mess in California's power when they tried to introduce competition.
Letting companies like Microsoft (which is NOT a natural monopoly) run around, are bad. They're just an unchecked bully.
Anyway, back to my point... I don't think Verizon being the only game in town is necessarily a bad thing... as long as they're kept in check, rates are kept reasonable, customer service is a MUST, and they provide the services required.
And they may have a point --- if all the equipment in the facilities were theirs, they could certainly have it back up and running quicker than following some silly FCC rules & procedures for working with other companies....
When the rates that the LECs could charge CLECs were first announced, the CLECs couldn't make a buck of off a subscriber then. Now that most of the carriers are gone, what do the LECs do, they jack up prices. Standard monopolistic practices. Why am I not supprised.
word out on the street is that they're even cracking down on their own resellers. Go figure.
God, that comic says it all. I was actually wondering about that. Didn't the airline industry get huge ammounts of money from the government to help them keep their employees, and then went and laid off a bunch of them anyway? I would make them pay back that money if I was the gov. This is a bit off topic but, personally, I think the government should not help the airline companies. They provided shitty security, and are going out of business because of it. Isn't that capitalism? Their service sucked, so now people aren't going to buy it. I see that as just deserved. Sure it might cost people jobs, but that's how the economy works. They'll find other jobs. I know it sucks, (hell, I'm unemployed myself), but that's how it works. Anyway, don't want to rant too much. Just my thoughts.
No sig for you.
You know, three years ago when the U.S. was economically prosperous and business was booming, we could afford to attack our best corporate performers with regulation. But right now, our economy sucks. People are being laid off all over the place.
Now is not the time to stifle the natural monopolies. Face it. It's inefficient to run more than one line to every house in America so that the consumer can decide which jack to plug their phone into. Phones lines, electric lines, gas lines - these all dictate a natural monopoly. Verizon is just one of them.
Sure, there's some confusion right now because more & more new things are coming into your house over that twisted pair of copper. It may take people a long time to accept that soon a single company will own everything that comes through that wire - your long distance & local calls, your videoconferencing, television, 3-d imaging, the news, the weather, your Operating System patches, your personal documents and consumer profile - but the consumer has shown a remarkable ability to adjust.
Seriously, relax and go with the flow.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Not that I'm a fan of Verizon, or use them for any type of service whatsoever, but to say that large areas of Manhattan are still lacking phone service is quite an exaggeration.
According to the NY Times article, only 10,000 of the 300,000 (or 3%) damaged lines have not been restored, most of those in Chinatown the surrounding area. I personally live only a few blocks south of where the WTC once stood and never lost phone service for a second, and everyone else that I know in NYC that had lost service had it restored very quickly. I see Verizon workers working 24/7 in this and other areas trying to restore lost services.
Sure, Verizon is no angel, but gimme a break
Jordan
On the one hand, you claim that changes in the rules would be bad. As evidence of this, you use an example of what Verizon is able (not able, rather) to do under the current oppressive regulations.
Verizon never asked to eliminate its competitors. It merely asked to be allowed to compete on a level playing field. The laws that say Verizon must sell capacity to its rivals are outrageouly biased. What, just because Verizon is winning the competition, the government gets to tell it who to do business with? Slashdot has a pretty large monopoly as far as "geek" weblogs go. How would you like it if the government told Slashdot it had to run pro-Microsoft stories?
Price caps are outrageously misguided to begin with. The California power crisis was a direct result of that type of economic micromanagement by the government. Or, how about rent controls in New York. That's a great idea, no? Oh, unless you want to rent an apartment any time soon; or you're a land lord who would like to be able to make market value off his holdings.
If Verizon wants to turn into a "sluggish monopoly", why not let it? Its more nimble competitors should then be able to run rings around it, no? Unless Verizon keeps doing its job as a premier telecommunications provider.
Michael, please take the misinformed commentary elsewhere.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
However, while there are usually strong laws requiring these companies to provide good basic service, there is nothing requiring them to add new services. Sure it would be nice if they added DSL, and if every company had their own copper lines EVERYONE would be offering DSL because they would want the customers. But there is no drive for these companies to offer things like DSL until it is clear there is a HUGE market and it will be worth these while. They have no drive to start offering it until then.
So these monopolies are great for a while but at some point things break down. I am hoping the wireless world will fix this at some point. If you have a large amount of bandwidth that you can use without having to run actual cables but just have some central access points we could see other companies actually break in (ie. we do at least have some actual choice in wireless plans, not just having the same company providing the service regardless of which long distance company we choose).
Verizon is just looking out for Verizon. The only monies they generate are in the areas where they leverage their monopoly. All the remaining areas where they have these grandiose dreams of ASP, and hosting, or whatever, are ALL losers. They are too old, and too slow to compete with other tech companies.
Pay a visit to their tech/data center in Tampa, it's like visiting a nursing home.
How do I know? I work there.
Awesome!
Phone lines running to your house are natural monopolies. Phone companies providing services and billing you for your calls are not. Before making any regulation, make a distinction between the two. The phone lines and dial tone can be provided best either by a single company that's heavily regulated, or by a municipal line-rental company (think Tacoma's municipal cable). The service and billing of calls, however, is in no way a natural monopoly, and eliminating choice in this will not help anyone.
Another interesting thought, though - phoneline-providing companies are not completely natural monopolies. I have AT&T Broadband for my local phone company, which means that my phone service comes over cable lines, which I'd have running to my house anyway; so if Verizon didn't have any competition in local phone that used its lines, or if there were no local phone lines at all, I could still have AT&T.
Here's my favorite ever Salon comic, also lampooning CEOs:
i ndex.html
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2001/08/10/tomo/
The editors should just include the registration-free link...
I'm currently employed as an engineer in the IT group of a behemoth in the banking/investing industry. Needless to say, along with the human impact of September 11th, we suffered a huge infrastructure as well. In a nutshell, we don't have a big footprint in the Verizon network directly, but basically they have the "last mile" monopoly in Manhattan. Even before this unpleasantness, they were unresponsive, generally un-knowledgable, and highly disagreeable to deal with. God help us if they gain anymore ground as a monopoly. MCI and World-Domm were ok until they merged...now they have the "my way or the highway" mentality. Apparently customer service. common courtesy and knowledgable staff aren't tenets that the TeleComm industry find antiquated.
I work for a small clec and the survey comes as no surprise to me. I may be paranoid but it always seems like Sprint is trying to screw us. If something goes down and we enter a trouble ticket on it they just say something to the effect of "Well there's nothing wrong on our end." If we pursue the matter further they say "Well, we looked and it must be you." By some mystery of nature after they "look" what ever outage has occured will start working again. We have to request that they hook up customers so we can provide dsl service. Half of the time they record the work as done and when we go to setup the customer on site it's not. Of course if we request they fix any of these things they just look, it magically starts working and we get charged. It makes us look like idiots to our customers when it's really a situation that is out of our control.
Anyway...
That said, it is an enormous undertaking rebuilding around several large central offices that were simply obliterated. In the bad-old-days where there was mother AT&T, this kind of mess would have brought people from all over the country in to fill the gap in raw bodies. We're left with the impression that this particular disaster was nearly 100% covered by Verizon people. Would calling for help to other operating companies have expidited the return to service?
All that said, at the beginning of deregulation was a proposal (squashed by lobbying) that central offices become 'open facilities' and all the copper in the street also become 'open'. Then these facilities would be serviced by a separate regulated monopoly which would level the playing field between the big, the small and the miscellaneous. Then outages like 9/11 would be dealt with by the 'open network operating company' as well as all those firms that provide dial tones.
I think it is probably time to revisit this as the ONOO would have sufficient scale to deal with network failures while still keeping real compition alive.
-- Multics
P.S. I have customers in Verizon and Ameritech/SBC. Give me Verizon *every* time. Ameritech genuinely sucks -- there are now times that simple things simply can't be done because there is no one left with the knowledge of how the damn system works.
Now is especially the time to defend a US citizen's basic freedoms, of which purchasing in a free market (controlled neither by the government nor by an oppressive marketer) is one.
I'm sorry--I don't recall any protections against "oppressive marketers" in the Constitution. I do recall a bill of rights, which includes an amendment reading "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Among those rights retained by the people, is the right to start a business, buy and sell as you please, and not be punished by the government for being successful. A century and a half bad laws, and two centuries of supreme court corruption, do not change the meaning of the constitution.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
The dragon, the system.
Money wins wars.
Monopolies make money better than other systems.
But the truth is that once a company establishes itself as out of control, the government should SIEZE it. Control it more as a public good, and take in revenue.
God spoke to me
first off i have verizon for my land lines and they are ok... i prefer them for my cell phone even. I HATE THEM FOR MY DSL! it's not the service i signed up for a little over a year ago (and yes, i figuring out who to switch to). a few months ago verizon made a move to "eliminate spam"..... the smtp servers only allow mail with a @verizon or @ bellatlantic return address. if they host your website, then you can get access to an smtp server... but for those of us with a few email addresses, unless they included an smtp server... we can not send mail from them. not too long after this they started blocking ftp access to certain places. the email blockage is explained on the website, basically their solution is to switch your hosting to verizon (um, no). as for the ftp blocking, i got a vague response from tech support about some anti-spam measures or something. what? at first we though something went haywire in our router, but we checked that out. it's odd... it's not everywhere, and it only blocks uploading. but the places it blocks are places i need to get to. it really sucks when some of the blocked places are ones that host websites i do work on. argh!
so what do people think of earthlink dsl? how about direct TV? they seem to be out only options. our cable co is *working* on bringing in cable modems, but they are so terrible about everything else that i dont think we want to be mixed up with them anyway.
I noticed a small, probably typographic error when reading the site today. If possible, could you please correct it by reposting this article under the category "It's Funny. Laugh." ? Thanks for your time.
But not for phone...for internet.
We were perfectly satisfied with Mindspring, except for some odd reason, every 5 minutes, we would have a 30-second period of null activity. This started occuring a few weeks after we got their service. After a few months, our connection just died. After a week, BellSouth admitted to rerouting our lines to their servers instead of Mindspring's, claiming we had asked them to. We tried twice to have the lines rerouted to Mindspring, and each time, they rejected the request without notifying anyone.
Finally, we were able to talk to BellSouth's local VP. He told us it would take a week to stop it from pointing to their servers, and another to point it back to Mindspring. Now, we aren't stupid. We know that it's simply a keystroke or two they need to enter into their computer, but their almost refusal to change us back finally made us just give up and accept their service.
Oh, and while we didn't have service, I used a friend's BellSouth service, since I figured they owed me anyways for the hassle they were putting us through. I still had the odd 30-second null activity. Oddly enough, within five minutes of signing up with BellSouth service, this went away, and all that they had done was simply give us an account.
No comment.
Last year I had the bad misfortune of moving to a new house while Verizon was on strike. It took approx. one month to get my telephone service turned on, all the while James Earl Jones was on TV commercials all day long trying to get me to buy Verizon DSL. Did I mention I was out of work and really needed a telephone so I could hear back from prospective employers? I had to go out and buy a cell phone.
Of course, water, gas, and electric took all of one day to get turned on. No problem there.
300,000 phone lines were knocked out, including severe damage to major telecommunications hubs. The kinds of repairs that are really needed, like a new central office, don't just happen! Especially if you can't just cut everything off to replace it. There's probably still water coming in from the World Trade Center as well. They were literally next door to ground-zero. Not to mention the billions it will take to rebuild. It wasn't too long ago that people on Slashdot were asking why wasn't there enough redundancy. As a regulated utility, the profits Verizon can make aren't all that huge. Economic factors are cutting into their money makers, like DSL and second phone lines. We know why lots of CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) are really suffering: bad business plans.
This does not to me seem possible.
Now I am no expert on the history of utilities in the U.S. (maybe someone with a Ph.D. can shed some light on this), but it seems to me that many people seem to forget that Verizon and other utilities have the advantage of huge amounts of existing infrastructure. (In fact, "Verizon" didn't even install a lot of it -- they inherited it from AT&T in the breakup.) Not only that, but this infrastructure was installed with the aid of and through countless special arrangements with local and larger governments (e.g. the U.S. Federal Government's Rural Electrification Act of 1936).
These governments realized long ago that it was in their best interest to aid utilities in building public infrastucture, whether through loan guarantees, municipal franchises, or other means. Although private firms played a much larger role in the U.S. than they did elsewhere, the utilities' monopolies are nevertheless to some degree government-granted.
While one might suggest that governments simply give the same aid to competing utilities in running another set of lines/pipes to every consumer, that is not only a very wasteful suggestion, but also one that ignores the fact that times have changed and it's no longer so easy to install the infrastructure. (I certainly don't want the streets torn up any more than they have to be.)
It is so unreasonable, then, that we ask these utilities to provide other companies access to the infrastructure that we helped them put into place? (...without dragging their feet and making every install from a competitor take gratuitously long)
Finally, while I agree that some things, like the maintenance of the two copper wires that run from my apartment building to the CO, lend themselves well to natural monopolies, it's not clear that all the other things that Verizon tries to do (Internet access, long distance service) should fall under the same umbrella.
The free market is a great ideal, and I'm all for it, but there are some circumstances where practical concerns make it unattainable and outside interference is required to prevent abuses. Pretending those practical concerns don't exist does not make them go away.
everything is in flux now - it's the perfect time to make changes and challenge assumptions. that's exactly what the gubmint is doing right now: we've assumed we'd always be free to speak and act and think essentially as we pleased, but it seems that's all up for grabs now, doesn't it?
so what better time to challenge the idea that we, as end-users, will just accept whatever's put in front of us? what better time to replace 'consumer' with 'person who keeps our company afloat?'
that aside, the idea of the free market is to allow the best ideas to survive. market darwinism. in the natural world, genetic diversity is the recipe for survival; so, in what way could shutting out competition - decreasing the diversity of ideas - be beneficial over time? there may be a short-term gain for one entity, but far more - and sometimes better - lose out. (think beta vs. vhs, for example.)
if the market rewards a company for, in effect, behaving badly, there's something wrong with the market - witness the ms antitrust, for one. there is a difference between 'attacking our best corporate performers with regulation' and allowing the rules that govern the marketplace to evolve with an eye to ensuring fairness and diversity of ideas; that's the idea behind antitrust, and it's why not allowing verizon et al. to force out their competition is a good thing.
the economy will always leave people wishing for things to somehow get better. so by your reasoning, it seems there would never be a 'good time' to mandate fair play. i don't buy it; i think it's a perfect time.
every good
Believe me the Bells want competition. They've been through the whole company split thing before. You know, about 15 years ago. Now the real problem with services offered by most CLECs is that they have to run it on some infrastructure of lines and switches. Of course, the Bells already have this large interconnected set of phone lines criss-crossing our country, so what's easiest for a CLEC to do, rent the Bell or long distance infrastructure already in place.
If CLECs really want to compete with the Bells, they need to become independent of the Bells.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
One infrastructure that all can share which was by the way developed as a monopoly.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Everyone and their cousin seems to be using the tragic events of September 11th as a way to push their laws, change their polices, etc. For example, I've noticed that movie theaters make a big deal about you bringing in bags. Is Osama bin Laden going to come to a tiny movie theater in the middle of nowhere? I doubt it. Is it going to make it harder for people to bring in their own food and put more money in the pockets of the movie theater? Yup.
I assume I don't need to mention all of the insane laws that have been passed to give the government more power to eavesdrop on inoccent people ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spot terrorists. Nor do I need to mention that more than 1,000 Muslims are in jail on no real charges at all, but the government seem to think that being Muslim means that they must be connected... I'm not saying that they don't have some possible terrorists, but, umm... I have my doubts that there were 1,000 people involved. I'd rather see a potential terrorist go free than a perfectly innocent person rot away in jail only because he's from the Middle East.
My intent isn't to bash the government, but merely to comment on how sick and disgusted I am by all the people profitting from the attack.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
it doesn't quite roll off the tongue:
Slashdot: Editorial logs for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
(All definitions from Merriam-Webster)
Editor: someone who edits especially as an occupation
Edit:
1 a : to prepare (as literary material) for publication or public presentation
b : to assemble (as a moving picture or tape recording) by cutting and rearranging
c : to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose
2 : to direct the publication of
I don't see anything about editors opinionizing. It is a newspaper convention to offer opinion, often written by the editor. But this opinion is (ideally, anyway) always clearly marked as such. Not slipped in among news stories.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
The problem with big companies like Verizon, they cant turn a big as a profit as little companies. Smaller isp's have a cost of 2-3 dollars per customer when largers telco's have 6-10 dollars per customer.
Are you paying more for better service?
And the excuse that Verizon needs to charge more, because they have to clean up. Will verizon get tax write offs for this? Did they get any aid to rebuild from the government?
Verizon has been bilking me for ISDN for ages, I pay 4x the price of DSL. Why bother upgrading me, then? Im told I might have DSL in may 2002. After they fix my CO. My CO is wired, but the ISP went out of business. Ya, monopolies good. Customers bad.
I went to a standard phone booth.
It was owned/maintained by verison.
I dialed "0" for an operator.
The voice on the other end said
"ATT, how may I help you"
(or rather deja vu?) ... although wrapped in red-white-blue bunting.
Qwest was sued locally for taking their sweet time setting up DSL that was run through different ISPs (then sold all their ISP customers down the river to MSN). There have been all sorts of problems as well with local phone service that is provided by "competing" companies- which oddly all seem for business, not residential service.
I'm sitting here wondering (and unable to access the NYT story) if a utility carries any insurance for such disasters.
Finally, I'm morbidly amused at how airlines that were struggling BEFORE 911 have been (relatively) bailed out... while a local ad agency who's primary clients involve the travel industry had mass layoffs- no charitable aid for those employees (the ripple traveled far and wide).
The media has avoided talking politics or partisanship in their efforts to front a "unified America"- but Republicans have been longtime supporters of deregulation and corporate welfare. This is business as usual, but we all somehow feel better about it as we carpet bomb the Taliban (as if shady business practices are bin Laden's fault).
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
We probably took part in this survey, and we concur with most of the results. As a small NYC based ISP, we depend entirely on Verizon to conduct our business. Perhaps I can lend some views from the inside.
When the dialup market was worth being in, Verizon (which was once in part Bell Atlantic, which was once in part Nynex) took years to increase capacity to our office. We just could not add dialups fast enough to meet the demand. There were many periods where our lines were hopelessly busy and there was very little we could do but harass Verizon.
This is important. We had to work extra hard around Verizon's deficiencies to provide a reasonable quality service. Eventually capacity was increased, but by the time that happened, the dialup market had dried up. Oh well.
We depend on Verizon to network our offices. One business we're involved with is "lighting" buildings with T1s and sharing it with tenants for a reduced price.
Lately, Verizon's been pretty stable and we haven't had any major catastrophes. Several years ago the story was much different. T1s would constantly go down. Adding redundant lines to different locations was in many cases useless (since the redundant lines went down at the same time!), and often quite expensive.
Verizon definitely knows that this is a business they should take care of. They're much more responsive to T1 problems, but there's still room for improvement. They are getting better though. Perhaps we're just lucky?
Our adventures in DSL-land have been.. interesting. We resell Verizon ADSL (but provisioned to our network) and the rate it's sold to us leaves us no choice but to price it higher than Verizon's offerings. This isn't that bad since our customers come to expect that they pay a little more for higher quality service from us, but it must be nightmarish for ISPs trying to sell it as a mass-market commodity.
The most significant value-added feature we offer over Verizon ADSL is that when it goes down, customers simply report it to us and we take care of harassing Verizon to get it fixed. Then we get back to our customers with the progress that's been made.
Talk about innovation!
We partnered with NAS to provide SDSL, and they seem to be the only major DSL carrier that can narrowly avoid bankruptcy. Verizon now offers SDSL though (to us, for resale) for significantly less, so NAS's future is still uncertain.
Verizon's quality of service has improved noticably in the past few years. It's still very substandard, but they're much more attentive to problems now. Maybe we're just having a good year. Keep up the complaints people, they might actually be listening.
Oh, also! We're lucky enough to be one of the few ISPs to partner with AOL Time Warner. We could be selling cable internet by sometime next year.
But the FTC has to approve the deal. Our tiny less than 20 employee company was being grilled by FTC officials on a whole range of issues. Apparantly this looks very suspicious to them.
AOLTW execs explained to us that they see sound economic advantages in partnering with small ISPs and want to do it despite FTC interference. Whether this is genuine or not will remain to be seen.
But I've already said too much.
Shameless plug time: If anyone's interested, we're New York Connect.Net, Ltd.
The Times article sums it up well: "Verizon has long argued that this competitive business model was flawed."
Verizon doesn't want competition, not to provide better service to the consumer, but to reap greater monopoly profits.
There is a simple solution to this problem...
Run your own mail server. Just a relay is all you need... make sure its authenticated so you dont get blacklisted by ORDB. I use ArGoSoft mail server, its small, uncrippled and freeware (they have plus and pro versions for $$). And its a fully functional server, so you dont deal with verizon's BS.
i dunno wtf you can do about ftp blocking, that is some major bullshit.
In five years time, the RBOCs will have succeeded in either bankrupting or buying AT&T, WorldComm/UUNet and Sprint. I suspect Level 3, XO and some of the other small players will just be bankrupted. XO is close to that now.
Then thanks to the lawyers, where I live the company came to be called The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. Still, standards remained somewhat high, although there was a decline in customer service.
Then sometime later, after another round of lawyers, this once fine company slipped another notch and became known as The Bell Atlantic Telephone Company. Standards were lowered once again. Unskilled contract workers replaced highly skilled in-house technicians. But more sad news was yet to come.
Another round of lawyers later and this company became known as Verizon. Standards were lowered yet again. A once proud technological giant was now being maintained by trained monkeys and ex-cons with GEDs and a tool belt. Service went to hell. Local offices completely disappeared. Customer service amounts to recorded messages accessed by touch-tone codes.
Give me back the Bell Telephone Comany. Give me back real operators, and real technicians. We loved the Bell Telephone Company. They did things right.
For a while I've been saying that as soon as I had an alternative I'd gladly drop C & P / Bell Atlantic / Verizon, and their "We don't care. We don't have to. We're The Phone Company" attitude.
There's a CLEC in the Baltimore area, Cavalier Telephone. I was going to wait until they'd been around for a little while to make sure I wasn 't jumping from one bastard to another, but this has pushed me into making the jump. Bye bye bastards.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
http://www.newnetworks.com/FINALISPSURVEY2001.htm
First off, nowhere in the article does it state how large the sample size is. Without knowing that you really can't know if this is a large enough sample size to be considered population size.
Secondly, how the heck did they figure 6.5 was a passing grade? Just pull out of their ass?
If you are going to do research, do it right.
Fucking shit.
Anyone know a company I can order phone service from besides Verizon in the Brooklyn area?? I ordered Verizon a couple of weeks ago.. the first time they said they couldn't do installations on the weekend and the second time they just didn't show up.. no phone call.. no nothing.. I have to take time off of work waiting for them. It sucks, basically because I don't know where else to turn to, just to get a phone in my apartment.. If anyone can help.. thanks
Hold off the -1, Troll and -1, Flamebait for a moment. The definition of a natural monopoly is that being big only means getting bigger and bigger until you're the only company left.
Actually quite a few electric and water companies are *granted* monopolies because that's socially more economic than letting them compete.
In fact software is the most natural monopoly, as the selfcost is practicly Development / No. of users. If there are two competitors they together have more development costs, but the same no. of customers, and thus higher selfcost.
Of course the natural monopoly can afford to be both inefficent and overpriced once it has the monopoly, but it's natural that one company will "win" and become that monopoly.
However, the lack of replication costs also means there's a cumulative amount of free software that will never get less, which is unique compared to other goods. What will win of those two forces is a good question, and IMO still unanswered.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The company doing most of those futures contracts was Enron. The company which cratered harder than any 10 (or maybe 100 (1000?)) dot coms combined.
Best Slashdot Co
As a pawn in Verizon's Domain I can provide my own story which proves their evil monopolisitic practices.
Trying to get any type of broadband to my home was a complete nightmare. I'll try to make the extremly and painful long story short.
I lived outside the workable range for dsl and was forced to try and get a 144/144 idsl connection which has a couple extra thousand feet of range.
Now of course verzion would not offer this service so I tried to go through some small isp.
Delay 1: 3 months after filing for a line and countless calls I find out why my isp hasnt been able to get a order through Covad's or np's(at this point not sure which) electronic system because verizon has my line incorrectly listed in the town over. This kind of thing could have been fixed in 10 mins with a simple phone call but my isp cant even speak to verizon due to some regulation, at least thats what i was told....
At this point I'm given an couple of installation dates and miss work to wait for the verizon guy who doesnt exist.
Delay 2: Several months later I'm able to get some secret phone number over at verzion and get someone who actually knows what they are talking about, or at least knows what the official story is supposed to be.... She tells me they couldnt install my line because there are no more pairs in my area. I know this is complete crap since I've seen verizon installing new lines on my street all the time.
So I do some reasearch and chat with my isp and figure out something that might work. Since we know verizon has no incentive to install a line for a competing service, why not ask them to install a line for their own serivce and then quickly have that lined swapped over for what i wanted.
Guess what ? It worked!
I called verizon and asked them to install a new phone line which only took about two weeks. I have no idea how my isp got verizon to do the hot swap, but they implied they had made a more cooperative contact at verizon recently.
Ive since moved out of that house and now have a TW cable modem which is a big step up for any verizon related dsl service ive seen.
This is only of my many stories of trying to get verizon to install dsl lines in the nyc area, now I tell people to get cable if possible.
A coupla axioms courtesy of goodwid:
It's unfortunate (and shoddy thinking) when only one aspect in a very complex situation is presented as a first cause. However, in this case, the poster's wrong-headed axiom in item 1 leads to the even more wrong-headed axiom 2. Here's a clip from a previous post of mine de-bunking another market uber alles stalwart's assertion that Cali De-Reg was de-regulation in name, but not in fact. Keep in mind, and as noted elsewhere in this thread, in the Cali debacle the wholesalers and the retailers were often siblings of the same corporate family; losses incurred to the one were profits to the other (and the twain meet upstream at the holding company -- see PG&E):
Naturally, there's considerably more involved than energy industry collusion (the pols who voted Yea on this thing, for one), but reducing the problem to one of inefficient communication between sectors (retail to wholesale), won't help us get where we need to: a reliable, cost-efficient power system.This is the most ignorant, worthless post I've read in a while.
Mod me down for flaming (I've got more karma than I know what to do with anyway), but at least mod the parent down too. That was just plain dumb.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Oh, your post reminds me. I did leave out some other details such as Verizon incorrectly bills us for the number of lines used constantly, goes ahead and bills our customers for ADSL even though they're signed up through us, and so on. It's come close to litigation several times.
You can become very desensitized to it after awhile. "The sun rises, Verizon is incompetent, etc."
Relatively speaking, Verizon isn't nearly as bad as they used to be. "More cooperative ISP contacts" may be a part of it..
it was suggested to me to run our own mail server.... thanks for the link and info......
i think we will do that.... though i still am looking into other DSL providers, verizon just made me mad pulling that. if we stick with verizon or not, i would still dig having our own box taking care of the mail.
It always seemed to me that in cases of natural monopoly the sensible thing to do would be to nationalize the service or otherwise turn it into a public utility. I'll take a public utility over a single corporation any day as one's mission is to provide a service vs. the other's goal of making dollars.
I certainly take exception that the competitive companies didn't do much getting the lines and service back on, that they were insignificant. So what? They were required to lease the line. The lines are still owned by Verizon and it's THEIR responsibility for getting them back in service. As for the actual services provided down that pipe, I've got clients in lower manhanttan with other providers, and they returned to service at about the same time as Verizon's service. I knew Seidenberg and cronies where a bunch of a-holes, but I didn't know they were quite as arrogant as they have come out to be. Their timing, attempting to gain from the disaster is absurd, and deserves PR, hopefully all negative. It certainly supports the idea of competition. As for getting the services back and the hoopla, they did get the services back. But it was done by the old time telco line employees, just the ones that Ivan & Co have made their best attempt to downsize. It wasn't the groups hired since that they hope to replace those folks with at a huge ratio as far as persons as well as cost. I still think the only way to get real competition is to have a breakup ala AT&T. Let the 'last mile' and physical CO's (the buildings, not the switches) be retained as the regulated monopoly and let every service provider, including Verizon, compete for services over that pipe. It's the only way we ended up with real competition in long distance and I think it's the only way we'll have any real competition in local service.
I've heard him... Vader does the voiceover for the commericals! Verizon is part of the Empire!
"People everywhere just want to be free" (of Verizon)
AUGAUUUGCGCACAUAUCUCAGCGAAUGAAAGGGAUUAA
An AC bashing an AC for being an AC.
I picked up the newspaper. What do I see on page two? Weather forecasts. Be more specific next time, we don't all read the same newspaper as you.
Now assuming your refering to the opinion page, you're just being a moron. Traditionally editors wrote most opinion articles, this is by tradition only, it is not part of the job description.
It is also considered extreamly bad, as a reporter or editor, to mix your opinions into the news anywere but the opinion page. This is what Micheal is doing. He is not editing (well, he might be), he is opinionating in a news piece. This is bad, and it deserves a good bitching.
I work for a company that has a couple of T1's in Manhattan thru Worldcom - the "last mile" in all cases is Verizon, not by choice, but because often they're the only ones with the equipment in the buildings.
We also have several point-to-point T1's directly thru Verizon, and a couple of voice circuits, also through Verizon.
One of the buildings we're in is about 3 blocks away from the WTC. Our data T1 was out for 3 weeks following 9/11. Our voice t1 to the same location was out for about the same time. We have 2 p-to-p circuits, down for slightly less time (although not terribly useful, since the main T1 was out!!)
The only reason we got the circuits up when we did (and very often, the only reason we get anything done with 24-48 hours AT ALL) is that one of our managers in NY used to work for Nynex as a tech and later a manager (which I believe was one of the telco's that merged to become Verizon - could be wrong here). He happens to know a lot of people inside Verizon (mostly managers).
An interesting tidbit: Verizon's main CO in Manhattan is on West St, right near the WTC. After the attack, large chunks of one of the buildings fell through the CO, and water pipes burst and filled up the basement. Verizon scurried for a while and re-located all of their circuits. We've had some recent problems with our Verizon stuff, and they've told us that they're presently moving it all back into the West St. CO. Yesterday we needed a p-to-p t1 fixed, we were told there were 300+ tickets ahead of us to be looked at at the CO. Insane.
Several times people told me that they thought DSL was available in my area, or as least "should be". One day, I checked back at the Verizon web site, and the status had changed from a definate no to the web page not responding.
So, I called my favorite local ISP (who has great service and only a slightly higher price). They took several days and eventually emailed back saying that DSL was not available in my area. I tried the Verizon web page once more, and the complete lack of response from their server has turned into an error message page which said the database wasn't working for my area and suggested calling Verizon.
Natually, I called Verizon and the woman I talked with tried to look up my number but could not tell if DSL was actually available in my area or not. Our conversation proceeded something like this:
Verizon: Do you want my to put the work order in anyway?
Me: What does that mean?
Vz: (Some jargon about their system and accounting proceedures)
Me: So what will really happen?
Vz: A technician will be scheduled to make the installation.
Me: Will I have to pay if they can't install it?
Vz: No, the order will be canceled, do you want me to put it in?
Me: Sure, why not?
Vz: Which service do you want
Me: What's the best one
Vz: 1.5 Mbps down and 384 kbps up, for $79 (and a bunch of stuff about the others, which I ignored)
Me: Only $79, that's great. Do I get a static IP number?
Vz: That's another department, would you like me to transfer you?
Me: NO! I mean, no, you've been very helpful and I'd like you to just put the work order in for me and we'll see how it if they manage to install it.
A couple weeks later, the box with the DSL modem showed up, and another week after that someone called to let me it was connected.
I checked back with their website a few weeks after the installation, and the page still said they could not determine if DSL was available in my area.
I don't see an antitrust conspiracy here... I think it's just a careless mistake on Verizon's part that their database doesn't properly reflect the status of DSL availability in my area. However, the net effect is that I can not get DSL service via my favorite local ISP (who I would gladly pay a bit extra to), but I can get it from Verizon... though perhaps only because I was lucky enough to have my call answered by a woman who cared so little that she'd just toss the work order in without being able to check wether the service was even available.
One final note: I had expected Verizon's service to be terrible based on all the problems Robin (girlfriend) has with their billing on her cell phone and all the DSL horror stories. In fact, the service was excellent. Someone called to let me know it was connected, and someone else made a followup call a few days later to check if it was working (I hadn't plugged the modem in yet). When I finally did hook it up, the speed was 1.5Mbps/128kbps. I called the toll-free tech support number and I got a real person within 1 minute. He was a front-line guy who trasfered me to a real tech, who picked up after only a few rings. I talked with the tech for a few minutes and she believe me and said she'd re-provision the line. She called back 20 minutes later to verify that the line had come back up and was running at the correct speed. It's been running well ever since, with only a few small outages, 10-15 minutes every couple weeks.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Proxy?
Having had Vitts in New England, I can tell you first hand Verizon is no good. They use the government sanctioned monopoly to rule the land.
Someone posted MS is more powerful than Verizon. I would argue Verizon is much more powerful than MS. Verizon has the government on their side.
Everything has been said before so I don't need to describe what happened here in New England.
My only real gripe is that I cannot string wires up on the telephone poles and create a network. That is illegal. Verizon can do it, but I cannot. I cannot open a central switching office. That's illegal too. Not exactly fair competition, is it?
Again, a classic case of 1000 lb. gorilla.
-Donald
As I write this, I'm trying out Verizon's one month free DSL service. Advertised maximum rate of 768 Mbps (bits not bytes) download spead, and I got the 2.4.16 kernel source from kernel.org at a rate of 720 Mbps. Not to shabby. Note however, that I routinely get 50Kbps modem connections and live only 5K feet from the CO.
I don't particularly like Verizon/Hell Atlantic.
So why try out this service? I now know what that my line is relatively clean, and can sustain decent download speeds. I also know that Verizon can (and did) hook up my phone line for DSL service. I have did a self install using only the DSL modem and line filters. I can't wait to hear the excuses Verizon gives me when/if I switch my service over to another ISP.
In my area Verizon does not have comp.os.linux.security in their usenet list. Indeed, I told the Verizon folks that I use Linux, and wondered if Linux was supported. The telemarketer talked to her supervisor and said that Linux was supported. Okay, send me the Linux installation software. Woops, they sent me a Windows/MacOS CD. Okay, I used my Powerbook to set up, then figured out the info to get this running under Linux (thanks roaring penguin).
This is OT for now. But I fear my fun is just starting with Verizon
Monopolies would be a great thing to have. Then whole industrys could move more quickly and effecently. But then this all comes down to greed. A monopolie whos only perpouse is to surive mankind whould be a great monopolie. DLS service for $20 and great support. But Monopolies are for money. Giveing the worst service posable at the highest price posable.
011000011001111
Briefly - too many eggs in one basket.
It is tempting to lay off - and centralize, and in NY, rents and all, it made sense to co-locate - easy to say with hindsight. With the monopoly came sluggish reaction times. Even now, basement stuff in planning - when that sea-wall could leak flood suddenly.
Get their year 2000 BR plans - they were all made to do them, and see what assumptions are bing made. Redundancy/ decentralization of infrastructure costs money - the only excuse to monopolise things is a promise to have a br plan in place that cuts the mustard .
The beauty about (disimilar) competition is that everybodys DR plan is different, and some will be better than others.
As a former Verizon employee, I think I can speak with some experience on this topic. While there are many hard-working and dedicated people working for Verizon who would like nothing better than to deliver first-rate service to customers, even if it means competing on an even playing field with other competition, I do not believe that these beliefs are held by upper management.
I should add that I was never a part of upper management, but at many times during my career with Bell Atlantic/Verizon I experienced the frustration of wading through their bloated and slow-moving ISO 9001 policies and procedures, hampered by continuous corporate reorgs and back-stabbing turf-mongering middle managers who wouldn't move a muscle to help get something done for a customer until one of my superiors at an equivalent managerial level made the call for help on my behalf.
The mere fact that the customer's Internet, or frame-relay service was down, or was scheduled to be installed and the installer hadn't shown up yet wasn't good enough; if I was calling a manager at the "Director" level in the chain of command, nothing happened until he got a call and a confirming email from a fellow director.
Here's a good example that I worked on personally. The District of Columbia Public School system gets its internal school-to-school network service and Internet connectivity from Bell Atlantic/Verizon at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per months. For a period of a year and a half, none of the classrooms could access the Internet from their PCs, and all Verizon did was schedule a monthly meeting in which they marched in about 8 or 10 "suits" to apologize and say "we're working on it".
One day they invited me to join the "apology" meeting. I offered to do a network audit, and found that the schools had installed their own firewall system on an outdated and mis-configured dual pentium 200 system. After submitting the network audit, demonstrating the source of the bottleneck that was choking off Internet connectivity, I wrote up a proposal for a new dual Cisco PIX system, with a WebSense content filter system (for the kiddies), and we cut corners with the DC government's convoluted purchasing system to have it installed at cost so that the DC schools could get their Internet back. It's been working fine ever since.
So like I said, there are plenty of people at Verizon who would like to do a good job, but the system is so bureaucratic that it's almost impossible to work within. Good network engineers rarely stay very long with the company, unless they are the kind of people who value stability and like the regular hours, steady paycheck, and job security that a job with a company like Verizon offers.
Fortunately, there are a lot of people working for Verizon who fall into this category, and that's why the Verizon part of the Internet backbone is as reliable as it is, and why you almost invariably get dial-tone when you pick up the phone. But does Verizon need the extra help of Tauzin-Dingell to "protect" itself against AT&T and "unfair competition" from the CLECs? I for one vote "NO".
-- Bill Johnston (wdj-netconsult@consultant.com)
We have a natural monopoly that works pretty well. You use this natural monopoly every time you leave your home, every time you get a package in the mail (or via UPS or FedEx).
Its called a road, and whether it is the driveway to your front door, your street, or the expressway over the hill, it can get you from virtually any single place in the country to another.
However, there is not an overregulated/underregulated/poorly regulated company or "industry" setting up toll gates every three miles, forcing you to run a guantlett every day to work, nor are there ten competing streets running up to your house.
Why? Because for all of its deficiencies things like roads work best when they are treated as public works rather than private feifdoms. It is true that government is imperfect, subject to political graft and other foibles (and themselves have stupidly set up tollgates on some major thoroughfares despite having tax money to cover the costs), but despite this the government is by far a better steward of our highways than any private company would be, if for no other reason than that it insures a free market, and equal access, to those whose business requires the use of said highways. Imagine how different it would be if Verizon owned the highway system. Think you'd still have a choice of using FedEx, UPS, or the US Mail? Maybe, if regulations required it, but what is the likelihood that the competing services would enjoy the same quality and cost of access to Verizon Highways and Streets that the Verzion owned mail service would?
Telefon wires and power lines are the same, and the only way to avoid Verizon-style monopolies and oligarchies is to nationalize the copper going to our homes and allow all competing services access to the wire under the same conditions. Anything else is inviting disaster, as we've already seen numerous times with the DSL and broadband collapses.
Democracy may be an imperfect check and balance on the government, but it does work a damn site better than a profit-driven monopoly dancing around and, in some cases, writing the very regulations that are supposed to restrain it and prevent it from doing precisely what Verizon and other telcos are doing: using their monopoly on infrastructure to destroy competing services.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Shit, big cities have multi-this and that. Rhinelander has ONE telco and that is Citrizens. Sure Century Tel are in the locale, but do not provide what we need. Citizens also owns/operates a local ISP known aas New North Net(known from this time on as NNN). The chief moron is a guy that is never on the premises, or if he is; he;s elsewhere. They have a woman running the network that has NO computer experience other than word, Etc.. NOT any network background. Their standard excuse for NNNs constant disconnects is: It MUST be YOUR modem..you know most software modems have "no" filtering like a "hardware" modem, PLUS. software modems are not as well shielded against interference from your(my) amateur radio equipment, and THAT is what is causing you to be disconnected..sure, I live on the radio 24 hours a day, and never turn it off. I asked the bitch just how she determined it was MY fault when YOUR network dumped ME, not the opposite. I have filed over 50 complaints with Lee Lappin of this company, and to date NOTHING has been done! I filed a complaint with the Wisconsin branch of the Conumer Protection Agency, maybe THEY can help get thos shitheads to fix the service. How many networks have YOU been on that disconnects you 7 times in 10 minutes??? Error codeds range from 650, 629 and 678 to 729, 790?...either way..it's a problem I an 2 other businesses complained about, but they ignore us as we are but a few of thousands..Talk about Q.O.S(Quality Of Service)...there is NO QUALITY! I talked to the manager about "service" I pay for and why I am dumped so damn often...he ranted about my paying for service, I said DISCONNECTS are NOT SERVICE...GO FIX THE DAMN NETWORK! I found out that NNN had the install done by the equipment mfgrs. BUT, they decided to run the network without KNOWING how it functions...NO WONDER they have problems! Oh, MY ISP's dial up is 715.365.0000 Try it...ping the net! Better yet, PING their brains, listen for hollow ringing! Screw "secret" dialups....that IS their actual dialup line for Rhinelander! *Be important, know everything*!
206.39.38.2, DDN-BLK-36, DOD NET INFO CENTER. 800.365.3642 206.36.0.0-206.39.255.255 NET RANGE.
Here in New Mexico Qwest decided that the best way to improve customer service was to lay off 5000 employees in the state. Apparently all those people answering the phones and helping people wasn't improving customer service. I'm not kidding they actually said that, and then did that. Now if you need help for a problem with your CO you've got to call Seattle. Qwest used to be 'USWorst' and now it's 'Qworst'!!!