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Covad On The Mend
ewhac writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Covad, who filed for bankruptcy protection last year, is slowly regaining strength. With $246 million in cash, Covad claims it has enough to carry it to profitability. They've also struck a deal with AOL to provide high-speed connectivity to AOL customers. The battle isn't over, though, as Pacific Bell continues to undercut Covad's offerings. Covad is effectively Pacific Bell's only remaining competitor for DSL service. As a happy Covad customer through Speakeasy.net, I'm pleased I won't be forced into PacBell's or AT&T's hands any time soon."
So you aren't getting away from them either way.
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
I'm a UUNET (gasp Worldcom) customer who uses Covad for my telco. When I first heard about Covad filing Chapter 11, I immediately called UUNET/Worldcom to determine what to do if Covad were go out of business. Worldcom, essentially said I would be shit out of luck. So for the last 6 months or so, I've been a little on edge about whats happening with Covad, but now that I see Covad recovering, I'm happy.
And then Worldcom filed Chapter 11.. Luckily Covad supports more than just Worldcom in my area, unlike how Covad is the only telco that can provide me DSL.. Funny how Covad uses Verizon lines, yet Verizon can't qualify me for DSL and Covad can..
Oh well, I don't like Verizon anyway, Go Covad!
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I just moved and needed to have my DSL moved as well. After Covad did their thing, my DSL didn't work so I called Earthlink and they said that Covad won't do anything about it. They will install once, "test it" and if it works, great and if not, oh well, they won't fix it. That's how they're cutting costs and heading towards profitability. No support whatsoever. A call to Pac Bell got me working DSL in 5 days.
I can't really say I blame them though it does suck for the ISPs that rely on Covad.
What everyone here fails to realize is that SBC, parent of Pacbell, is deploying Remote ADSL Terminals based off of fiber lines from the CO called PROJECT PRONTO. It will completely eliminate Covad within SBC territory in the next 5 years or so. SBC converts Central Offices over to PRONTO ONLY, once all the lines have access to the Remote Terminals. I work at an ISP and have seen it happen at SBC and other LEC's. Covad cannot resell SBC or other ADSL service from fiber boxes/remote terminals, and thus they Covad will start to die a slow death at the hands of SBC. Anyone care to challenge my opinion?
There are plenty of things that a CLEC can do (or can get the ILEC to do) if your line doesn't support DSL out of the gate. There are usually other pairs they can try, or alternate wiring that can be used in the CO, or poor stretches of your line that can be replaced. There are also some problems that are easy to fix, but difficult to diagnose. Of course every hour they spend trying to make your line work is 6-12 months of profit they loose paying technicians, so there is no incentive for them to try and solve problems. There are commercial DSL providers that will solve the problems for you if you are willing to pay. I have worldcom as my CLEC (but not as my ISP), and they were very helpful getting DSL to work in my location in a situation that covad would have walked away from.
Experienced telco labor is expensive, and you can't have cheap broadband, free instalation, and good technicians all at the same time. You only get to pick two.
Does anyone know when will more _affordable_ DSL (20-30 dollar USD price range) services will be out? Ive always wanted to get DSL, but its average price tag is far out of my budget...
anybody have any thoughts about what will happen now that the telcos are not forced to share lines? the appeal was not granted, so this should be a huge problem for everyone but the telcos - line sharing is no longer government-mandated as of jan 2003.