Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
The editors should just include the registration-free link...
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.
(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.
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.