Slashdot Mirror
DSL Amidst Phone Wars
DrewCapu writes "The SF Chronicle has an article which talks about the battles between SBC and AT&T & MCI over supposed unfair practices concerning DSL and switching phone companies. All sides have their own spin on it. Can't we all just get along? Things have been heating up ever since SBC got closer to offering LD in CA."
first post. i hate dsl
fuck you all cock matt havener penis fuck is sucking cock
"can't we all just get along?"
man I didn't know communists posted to slashdot.. oh wait, right, linux communists..
merry xmas
little drunk, myt cousin looks damm good.
Merry Christmas
dsl hates you.
Eight post annoys you!
I live in Alameda (near SF), and I can tell you that the article is not stretching the truth at ALL. I personally have DSL thru a small local ISP who partners with Covad, but when I moved to my new apartment, I still had to get a landline from SBC (as they've apparently cut off the likes of Covad from getting dry pairs with no phone account associated for DSL). More on topic, several of my customers have switched to other local carriers, and either had to give up DSL (for cable, which in Alameda is run by the very excellent Alameda Power & Telecom, but I digress), or keep one SBC line.
I guess having AT&T and MCI on "our" side is a good thing, though with the Yahoo!/SBC DSL crap SBC is giving out now, I don't know why anyone would want to stay with 'em.
you hate dsl.
"All dogs out!" as she let all her dogs out.
to all the IANALs, would there be any possible way to get a class action lawsuit for something these companies are doing??
merry xmas and all that...
in Soviet Russia
Couldn't the same be said of SBC? I mean, if SBC continued to provide DSL service to those customers, then they too would "generate more revenue" than if they were to just hand it over to AT&T or MCI. Is it greed? Or do they just want to control our means of communication? They can't have it both ways.
I guess that answers the question of WHO LET THE DOGS OUT.
sucking cock is fuck you all cock matt havener penis fuck.
The whole idea of requiring phone company A to allow phone company B to sell "service" over phone company A's lines is ludicrous. Just let them both run their own lines.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
are belong to that dude's granny. (she sticks em in her fanny)
Joke kills YOU.
Everything was silent that Christmas Eve. Only the lightly falling snow
that decorated the landscape seemed to exhibit life. The children of the
Streamer family had gone to bed early in hopes that Santa would come. Tom
Streamer and his lovely wife Laura were snuggled in each other's arms,
anticipating the joyous laughter that soon will fill the Midwestern farmhouse
as it did each Christmas before. Laura was asleep but Tom was engrossed in
thought.
Tom had promised himself that this year's drought and its devastating
effects on his family's income would not spoil this Christmas for his children.
But the lack of revenue made it impossible for him to buy the one thing his
children wanted so desperately: a pony. All Midwestern farm kids, except his,
had ponies to ride and Tom felt a sense of guilt not being able to afford one.
Tom looked over towards Laura. He then realized he was a lucky man to
have such a beautiful and adoring family. His fifteen year old son, Jimmy, had
made All American in just his freshman year of high school. His thirteen year
old daughter, Amy, was fast becoming a remarkable woman.
Without warning, Tom's thoughts were interrupted by a loud crash coming
from the roof of the two-story wood framed house. Startled, Laura woke to hear
the supports in the attic creak under the strain of something heavy.
"What is it?" Laura asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes.
"I don't know," Tom replied, moving quickly out of bed and putting on a
robe. "Let's find out."
Laura followed Tom's lead while also slipping on a robe.
As they scampered out of the master bedroom, they were greeted in the
hallway by Jimmy and Amy.
"Is that Santa?" Amy asked.
Jimmy said, "I don't think so, Amy. But I'm ready for anything."
Tom and Laura laughed as Jimmy knifed his hands through the air. He was
taking Karate lessons at the local YMCA and was anxious to demonstrate his
newfound skill. Amy and Jimmy soon followed their parent's laughter with
snickers of their own.
"Come on, 'Karate Kid.' Let's see what's going on," Tom said, grinning
while ruffling his right hand through Jimmy's thick curly hair.
The family followed the creaking sound along the rafters.
"It seems to be heading towards the chimney," Laura said perplexed.
"It is Santa!" Amy exclaimed.
"Don't jump to conclusions just yet young lady," Tom said with a fake
scowl on his face. "The fireplace is lit. Maybe it's an animal that got on
the roof from a nearby tree and wants to get close to the heat coming from the
chimney. It's cold outside you know."
"By the sound of it, it's a pretty *BIG* animal don't you think, Dad?"
Jimmy went back to making Karate chops again.
They huddled around the top of the staircase, crouching down to get the
full view of the roaring fire in the fireplace, wondering what the source of
the sound on the roof was going to do next.
All of a sudden the fire in the fireplace blew out with a whooshing sound.
But just as suddenly, the fire roared back to life. The four of them gasped.
There, standing in front of the fireplace, was a very large man with a white
beard dressed in a red suit, wearing gloves and a cap and stroking the head of
a magnificent pony!
"Ho ho ho," the jolly old man chuckled. "Wasn't that fun?" the man asked
the beast. The pony nodded his head up and down as if to agree.
"That *IS* Santa," Tom whispered, bewildered.
The four bodies at the top of the stairs stole quick glances at each other
then just as quickly returned their gaze towards the scene that was taking
place in the living room.
"I'd better get you ready for the children," the jolly man said with a
twinkle in his eye. He moved without delay towards the far side of the
handsome animal and fell to his knees with a loud plop. The pony was parallel
to the fireplace and the big man was in between them. The reddish orange glow
cast forth from the flames complimented the rosy cheeks of the warm-hearted
man. The fire being near the floor illuminated the underside of the well
muscled beast. It was a stallion!
Santa took off his gloves, neatly folded them together, then deposited
them in one of his coat pockets. He stroked his left hand lightly along the
backside of the pony's resilient ass muscles, periodically fingering the
steed's puckering asshole. He used his right hand to massage and knead the
pony's huge balls in small circles, like a skilled juggler handling a pair of
baseballs in one hand.
"Ho ho! I see you trying to poke out," Santa said with a stout laugh. He
flicked his tongue around the inside of the ring of thick skin. The pony
raised his head and shook it from side to side causing his mane to wave
majestically as if flowing in an imaginary wind.
"You love it, don't you boy?" Santa asked the pony. The pony responded by
popping the cockhead out through the first fold ring and telescoping the meaty
shaft another four inches.
"A sex horse!" Laura whispered in subdued excitement.
"Yeah! Just what I really wanted for Christmas," Jimmy mused without
realizing that he was thinking out loud.
"You too?" Amy asked surprised.
Tom looked at Laura. Stunned, they both looked at the two children. They
had discussed the topic of sex with their children but only on a basic level.
They were very pleased to learn that Amy and Jimmy had taken a healthy attitude
towards sex in general and towards sex with animals in particular.
Tom and Laura confessed that they too wanted to have a sex horse. But
they were afraid of what the children might think if they'd ever found out.
"Don't worry, Mom and Dad. I've wanted one for a couple of years now.
You see this won't go away half the time," Jimmy said pointing to the big lump
in his pajamas. "And you and Mom won't allow Amy or me to have human sex until
we're eighteen. I fully understand your reasons why. So that's when I came up
with the idea of having sex with animals. I can learn about sex, have a great
time at it, and won't get some girl pregnant!"
"Me too!" chimed Amy. Amy blushed realizing not all of what Jimmy said
applied to her - that girls can't get girls pregnant. The others chuckled.
"You know what I mean. One of the girls at school has a pony that she fucks
with all the time and she doesn't worry about getting knocked up by the horse -
'cause animals can't get humans pregnant." Again Tom looked stunned at Laura.
But they shrugged their shoulders in unison. After all, Amy had become a
level-headed young woman and deserved the freedom to express herself in the way
she saw appropriate for the occasion.
"Jimmy, are you disappointed that it's a male pony?" asked Tom.
"Heck no, Dad. I'd love to suck on a cock just as well as fuck a pussy
any day."
Again Tom looked at Laura. This time Laura turned the corners of her
mouth down in a matter-of-fact kind of expression. "My, how our children have
grown," she said then laughed.
"Shhhhhhhhhhh," Tom whispered with his index finger sticking straight up
in front of his puckered lips. He couldn't hold back a chuckle himself.
"Let's watch."
The pony's cock pulsed rhythmically up and down in unison with the
stallion's own heartbeat. The shaft grew thicker and stiffer with each passing
second.
Tom was pleasantly surprised that the pony was well cared for. He knew
this by the way the sparkling glow of the fire reflected off the shaft of the
clean cock. If the cock weren't clean it wouldn't have been shiny.
Santa removed his left hand from the stallion's flanks and scooted
sideways towards the pony's front legs. He took off his cap, stuffing it into
an empty pocket, and then positioned himself under the pony so that his back
was supported by the pony's front legs and the pony's cock was directly in
front of his face.
"Ho ho ho," Santa bellowed, his mouth now the right size and shape to suck
the pony's cock deep inside. Santa moved his head and torso forward an inch or
two and stuffed the fist-sized tip of horsecock into his mouth. He slowly
continued his head and torso movement forward, pivoting at the waist. Inch
after solid inch of extremely thick horsecock continued its moist journey into
Santa's well-stretched mouth, the tip scraping his palate and flattening his
tongue. The family members choked as they saw all fifteen inches of horsecock
vanish into Santa's swelling mouth, throat and stomach! Santa's nose invaded
the space formed between the pony's abdomen and the cockshaft within the
sheath, the top of Santa's head tickling the pony's belly in the process.
Still breathing, Santa savored the uniquely animalistic aroma coming from
within the pony's sheath.
The pony slowly exposed half of his spit-slickened love tube, then
abruptly jammed it all back in again. He repeated the action six more times
then left his sex weapon buried to the hilt on the last stroke.
The pony's flanks quivered and his tail waved to and fro as the blissful
steed came violently, planting his scalding hot seed directly into Santa's
stomach. But Santa didn't want to drink all of the pony's horsecum, for he
knew that the family was watching him. He'd staged this exhibition especially
for their benefit. After all, he is Santa and Santa knows all!
Santa tapped the pony on the knees and the pony instantly pulled his cock
out half way, the well lubricated shaft spasming with radiant energy. Santa
sat upright dislodging the stallion's cock from his mouth with a loud squishy
sound. The fist-sized tip, now free, flared to over five inches in diameter
while horsecum hosed Santa's face and beard.
Eagerly, Santa drank the remainder of the stallion's cum. He held the
twitching piece of horseflesh as still as possible while directing the forceful
jets of tasty horsecum into his still-gaping mouth.
When the last of the horsecum shot into Santa's mouth, Santa gulped it
down while smacking his lips several times. Santa worked the dripping horsecum
on his face into the exposed flesh. It gave his skin a healthy glow. The pony
again stood normally while the flared hood of his cock shrank and the shaft
drooped once more.
Santa grabbed the rapidly deflating cock and licked it all over. He
turned and smiled as he looked up the stairs where the sexually electrified
Streamer family was watching.
"Ho ho ho! Take very good care of my boy here! Merry sex-mas to you
all!" he boomed. The fire went out again for a brief moment and once more
re-ignited.
Santa was gone but the magnificent steed remained, his head turned towards
the family. Tom, Laura, Jimmy and Amy each swore they saw a smile on that
pony's face!
|Copyright (c) 1994 cDc communications and Grr Raoul Leash.|
|All Rights Reserved. 12/01/1994-#295
Then he'd meditate for awhile. He liked whores, too.
If I recall, the US is the only place that still has this. What if you're someone whose main phone is a cell phone, why should one have to get a redundant land line just to simply get DSL, whether it be the main carrier or an alternative? DSL is expensive as it is (contract, connection, no dissatisfaction guarantee), but one must also pay for deposit, connection fee and service on a land line as well? This is the main reason cable has more customers: the price is lower, they don't charge connection fees, they don't make you sign a contract, they don't make you buy the modem or NIC (hell the NIC is yours to keep after service is terminated), and you sure as hell don't have to pay for simply having a signal line to connect on.
SCB here in Memphis charges $50 a month for service. They make you buy the modem, they charge a connection fee, they require a contract. This on top of having to have a land line. All of a sudden this overpriced DSL now in reality costs $82, at the very least.
I'll stick to my $30 a month cable connection.
While this tactic might seem counter-productive, serving mainly to make SBC look bad while rival services gear up to implement their own DSL offerings, it would be helpful to take a look at SBC's situation from the company's standpoint.
SBC's third quarter earning report show the company getting absolutely hammered on the earnings front, with revenues off 14 percent, down over a billion dollars from a year ago. This drop can be attributed to competition between phone services, and more importantly, the rise of alternative communications technology. While DSL subscribers are increasing steadily, the added inflow of dollars is being more than offset by the hemmorhaging in the phone services sector.
Thus it can be seen that big phone companies relying primarily on local and long distance phone service are seeing their traditional market being eroded away, and are panicking. Look for more tricks like the DSL service hostage stunt in the near future as lumbering Old Economy companies try anything to shore up their shrinking incomes.
Hopefully, companies like SBC will soon be willing to implement the kind of out-of-the-box thinking needed to restructure their companies for the (gradually...) emerging New Economy, and will leave these kind of lame tricks in the past. Until then, there's always cable.
In other news, Flame Entertainment is rumored to be illegally selling wireless access to their 512kb/s internet connection in the Jefferson City, TN area. No one else has 802.11b equipments; hence, no one cares.
(If my cable company is reading this; it's just a joke. Please don't cut me off; DSL is such a bitch. Much like you have become since you restricted me to one @$#@$ing IP you megalomaniacal sons of bitches!)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I moved to in with two of my not so computer savvy friends, who insisted on the microsoft name, well, after struggeling with delayed shipping, and a whole list of other hassels, we got it hooked up, but, the my computer doesn't get a -REAL- ip address, my modem gets the IP, then it does NAT/firewall, but with a 255.255.255.252 subnet, so it will only assign one computer, which pisses me off to no end, after less than 20 minutes of fitzing around and RTFM'ing i call MSN, i can't turn the feature off, they apologize, i arrange to have my ISP switched, call back in 20 minutes and cancel service, good thing there wasn't a contract, whew! i still have to pay $50 for internet for less than a day, i'm irked
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I hope Qwest is paying attention to how SBC got away with^h^h^h^h^h accomplished this.
Keep in mind that this is all for the good of the consumer, exhume Judge Green, he will tell you... and pay no attention to that lobbyist behind the curtain or those lawyers behind the woodpile... really.
Buy more media stocks; the long distance telco advertising mind share wars are about to begin... again (Warning: may cause pain, dizziness, nausea, and other complications - no wait that was the pharmaceutical companies).
Use a cable modem or better yet wireless service, and a cell phone. All a dialup line gets you is telemarketer calls and another wire to trip over.
...forcing the purchase of an additional product or service as a condition of purchasing a product or service was called, "tying" or "bundling," and was verboten.
I never thought I'd see the day when the cable companies would look good by comparison, but at least they will sell you cable internet service even if you don't have cable TV-- you'll just have to pay a little extra.
A long what ?!
This is perfectly accurate. As far as we can tell, PacBell has the equipment sitting in the CO waiting to be connected, they just wouldn't use it until this happened their way. As much as I hate to see another monoply grow and the baby bells get really powerful again, I am glad that it is likly we will now get DSL. The horrors of dial-up will hopefully be a thing of the past.
I just wish it wasn't at the risk of another monoply. But I seem to have no other choice, which should shout a warning. I won't leave much of an excerise to the reader to figure out what I mean.
I touch computers in naughty places
SBC got rid of unbundled loops just for this reason so you have to use their phone service to get ADSL.
with an unbundled network element SBC doesn't get to rape its customers. Only CLECS are allowed to purchase UNI circuits.
SBC is basically shoving there phone service down your throat wether you need it or not.
With a unbundled network element you can have a ADSL circuit plus use any phone company you want.
SBC first offered ADSL as a lineshare option or an unbundled loop but realized they could rape you by not offering that option anymore
Just an overworked HSD installer's thoughts...
I disable sigs...do you?
The trolls are the only thing good on this site. You'd best pay your respects to them. Granted, I would like to see a combination of Foreign Language Troll and Soviet Russia troll.
...without having to pay the "phone service tax"? Your explanation does nothing to explain THAT.
Why do I need a voice line in order to get DSL service in the first place? I don't want a voice line and I can't be the only one.
Because of this, anyone who wants DSL must also pay (Verizon, in Los Angeles) $26/month for a voice line they have no intention of using.
Is it like that everywhere or just here?
Is this reverse bundling? Instead of giving you something for 'free', they force you to buy one, unrelated thing, to get another thing. This folks, is a load of shit. I hope that the California PUC drops the hammer on SBC. I'm in Maryland, and my business had to buy a $12/month (okay, it was actually $20, since it's a 'business' line) line just to get DSL. Of course, I couldn't get DSL, since asshole Verizon and stupid business decisions from Northpoint killed off competitive DSL in the area.
If the Baby Bells hadn't had piss poor (or no) service since 1982, if they hadn't done almost everything in their power to alienate customers as much as AT&T before them, if they hadn't been collecting monopoly rents for 20 years, perhaps there would be no market for CLEC's. But there are.
This is very similar to the thinking in RIAA member companies. Let's treat the customer like garbage, let's increase the charge for this 'service', and then let's dig in our heels and bring out big legislative guns to keep things that way.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This is just one of their latest ploys. They're also trying to get rid of the Unbundled Network Elements that let their competitors offer local service in the first place. They're fighting tooth and nail against any competition at all.
What sickens me the most is how SBC uses the cloud of smoke to its advantage. In blazenly pays for commercials to be aired which says how they support competition in the telephone industry and they're working towards it. At the exact same time they're active sabotaging it. Remember that unfriendly, uncooperative monopoly of ten years ago? Same people. Never think for a moment that they are working in your interest. They are NOT.
In my mind, this is all an anachronism - you have cable-TV, phone and electric wiring going out to every household in pretty much all of the civilized world these days. Is it just me, or doesn't this strike you as being two companies in the wire business too many?
;-)
In many places in the world, you can today choose your provider of electrons to power your gadgets, but you typically have a lot less options when it comes to wires that provide a little more structure to the very same electrons (beyond the 50/60 Hz).
It would seem to me that in the future, we'll see a local "wiring company" that pretty much only provides the wires (electric and data), while power generation, cable-TV, telephony, Internet will all be provided by separate companies. (I hope the last three will actually be rolled into one service, but never mind that.)
I'm personally just waiting for the cell phone providers to wake up and realize that if they were to drop their outrageous charges for air time in the cells covering people's homes (call it the "home area"), then a lot of people would completely give up on the concept of land line phones and opt for just having personal mobile phones.
It would kill the market for cordless phones, though.
BUT... phone companies, like public utilities and most cable companies, are natural monopolies. That is, the initial investment required for buildout is so high that it more or less excludes competitors from building their own infrastructure. Requiring these phone companies to sell the usage of their lines to other companies that provide other services makes perfect sense in my mind. It opens up those services to more competition through the lower financial barrier to entry.
--sdem
Not quite. I access the Internet via Time Warner's RoadRunner, and they gave me an external modem which I have to return when I stop using the service. Furthermore, I have to sign on to a year contract.
However, I'm totally content with the service and the price. And when the line goes down, I don't have to pay some exhorbitant price to have a tech come and look at the jack.
I originally had Ameritech (now SBC) DSL installed at both the office and home. 1.5M sDSL @ the office and 768/168K aDSL @ home.
Garbage service and _reliability_. Lasted a month at the office before being replaced with a T1 with another provider.
Kept it at home as it was the _only_ choice in town. Was. Due to ongoing poor service and a sudden speed to 384/128K for no apparent reason -- yet their billing and website for me have is at the already gotten 768K speed.
They asked me if somebody else in the neighborhood recently got DSL. I hung up the phone laughing...
Current trend in this area is 5Ghz wireless with the ISP currently _easily_ giving you 2Mbs/768K bandwidth for the same cost.
This is my _only_ option as I refuse to get a phone line to try and get DSL with another provider. They all say SBC *requires* a POTS line even though I do have my backup/voice ISDN line with them. Not for long -- that's going to ANYBODY else for that service due to their games.
Not to mention I'm in charge of the office lines covering a couple of T1's, PRI's and a few dozen POTS and BRI lines peppered about. All about to be changed to other providers over their DSL games.
Obviously I'm not the only one... How ironic.
They've been calling. They've been mailing letters. SBC has really really tried to get me to switch back from Worldcom ("The Neighborhood") as my local carrier with unmetered long distance... oh... and unmetered "local long distance" in my own area code. Here is their latest attempt to convince me to switch back.
They don't have anything close to what I'm getting now. In fact, SBC just got through dropping the plan I had with them, "Local Plus", which was unlimited "local long distance" (again, calls inside your area code that are long distance) so they've moved even further away from what I want.
I figure they're probably going to harrass me for an eternity or until I switch back. I'm more than happy to them to be spending money to pursue me. I'm tired of giving my money to them.
I have identified only two companies that I have dealt with which I believe actually hate their customers and work against them. The first was TCI, the second was SBC. Even at a state level, we have people working with/against SBC (your PUC... public utilities commission, where they go to make their rate and service changes) to prevent them from completely screwing everyone over. Doesn't that tell you something if your own state is protecting you against this company?
DSL is more suited to people who are content producers...
Substantiate that argument.
I WISH MICROSOFT JUST DIE DIE DIE DIE DIEEEEEEEEE
Santa.... I want microsoft to die for christmas
here's a link: http://www.lemonparty.org
So how many lines to you expect to be run? I'd hate to have my yard or the city streets dug up any more than they already are!
Really... just think how many local providers there are.
Why don't they just separate the local-loop provider from the local service, DSL, and long distance carriers? This company would just sell lines to other phone companies and would make all of its revenue that way. It is the only part of phone service which makes sense to be a monopoly.
Then local providers and long distance providers could compete on fair ground and there wouldn't be any conflicts of interest, forced sales, or screwed over customers.
Enjoy the lemon party
I agree with you in sentiment.
Here in San Francisco at mi casa, if you want high speed internet for any kind of reasonable price, you have to get DSL.
If you get DSL, SBC will receive $40 US per month. When DSL was getting started, it was perceived that Pacbell (now SBC) would monopolize it rapidly, b/c they own all the lines. So, they HAVE to allow any ISP to use the line for DSL, provided SBC receives $40/month.
Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that SBC will take in 80% of all revenue associated with high speed internet here. No matter who the ISP is.
What is worse, you can't get rid of the land line. SBC claims the $40/month is only supplemental to phone service (which is, ironically, less expensive for line charges than DSL). So unless you spend at least $25 or so per month for minimal phone service, and $40 for the DSL line, you can't get a line for DSL. Add another $10 for minimal PPPoE ISP service, and you are pretty close to an $80 monthly bill.
Now, you might think cable is cheaper, but the AT&T cable internet offered in town is between $40 and $50 per month. If you don't pay for cable also, it costs $60/month (they cannot turn off basic cable if you get cable high speed internet - so you pay for minimal cable whether you want it or not).
My house can't even get the cable. I am thinking seriously about colluding with my neighbors to have 4-5 houses using my DSL line.
This is all a deck of cards that should come crashing down mightily if someone gets set up to offer wireless internet in town in any sort of reasonable fashion.
The whole argument revolves around how DSL is defined. To most of us Slashdotters (and consumers in general), we see DSL as a seperate entity from local phone service. This probably stems from dial-up being seperate from the local phone service. However, one can make the argument (and it seems SBC has) that DSL is a service add-on, therefore cannot by transferred when you switch local carriers. So, think of it as Caller ID... you lose caller id if you switch to a carrier that doesn't offere caller ID. The technology is there for SBC to still offer caller id to you, but, you don't have their local service anymore.
I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
The washington think-tank CATO held a conference on 11/14 called "Telecom and Broadband Policy After the Market Meltdown" where they invited industry analysts to debate the effectiveness of industry and government to solve the complete fuck-up that is home broadband in our time.
here's the link to the page, scroll down for the four-part, two-day real-video webcasts. put yourself in the know.In Japan you can get DSL without voice service which will save you about 600-700 dollars in the "line rights."
The phone company is happy to provide the copper line for you (or activate your current voice line into a DSL only line) because they get their share of "carry-DSL-fee" (about 20 dollars a month) regardless. ISPs (you pick one) who actually provide you with the DSL service charges around 30 dollars for between 8Mbit-12Mbit service.
I heard that CA is the only place that can't do the no-voice line thing, though; but don't quote me on this one.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
My own personal SF Bay Area DSL horror story:
I went with Earthlink, who (in my area) gets their DSL service through Covad.
I had fine service for a long time. Then, one day, it stopped working. Completely. Dead line.
After many calls in to Earthlink, I finally got them to escalate it to the network level (and then, to Covad). I get a phone message saying "my problem has been fixed." It isn't fixed. It hasn't changed at all. Repeat process.
Eventually I am told that my line tests to the same levels it was at when Covad first turned it up. In other words, there's nothing wrong. Earthlink would not roll a truck to see what was wrong -- it wasn't worth the expense to them. When I asked what I should do -- "Do I cancel my Earthlink and get cable?" -- they said that, yes, that was an option, or I could investigate their satellite service. BTW, because I had been a customer for so long (over a year), there would "of course" be no cancellation charge on my "service."
I was about to go completely fscking ballistic when one guy at the Earthlink NOC made a little suggestion. I decided to take his advice.
I took my DSL modem out to my demarc box in the side yard with an extension cord and a "red box" cable (basically, a phone cable with the red and green pair stripped and attached to alligator clips). I plugged the modem into each pair at the box and cycled the power, until I got a circuit that looped up. Sure enough, my DSL line was, in fact, active.
What was the trouble? The wires had been cut.
I'm not kidding here -- the ends of the red and green wires were absolutely clean, and they were about an inch shorter than the other wires in the cable. It was quite plain that somebody had snipped them. I pulled out a wire tool, stripped the ends, tied them down to the pair I traced back to my DSL jack, went back into the house, and plugged in the DSL. Voila! It looped up right away. I "dialed out" with my PPPoE username/password, and I was online again at full speed, as if nothing had ever happened.
Thinking about this, I realized that my DSL outage had coincided with my new upstairs neighbors moving in. They would have ordered new phones with SBC Pac Bell. A little too much of a fscking coincidence for my likes.
I asked a few people about it, and a couple of them told me they'd heard the same thing: SBC techs don't like seeing Covad lines in the field, and they're fond of disabling them -- apparently, to achieve the same results I got (Covad, Earthlink, or whomever else telling the customer that they'd have to switch service.)
Of course, this is all hearsay (from me to you).
Breakfast served all day!
Learn how to make a request without sounding like an imperious dick.
Drop your Pacbell account to a metered $5/month and let Vonage carry your calls Voice Over IP via DSL, unlimited calling anywere in the USA for $40/month. Unfortunately Comast doesn't offer cable broadband in my neightborhood otherwise I would tell Pacbell to kiss off forever.
Is this modded down? This is a very good point.
Decisions, decisions...
Seems to me choosing whom to root for amongst any of the big TelCo's would be alike trying to choose whom to root for in a war between Iraq and North Korea.
Personally, I would tend to vote in favour of mutual annihilation.
what did Iraq and North Korea do to you? You are not even in the neighborhood like I am. Please don't start a war with N Korea.
The government already paid for the laying of those lines. So, I imagine, the government should have a say.
Don't like it? Tough tits, that's capitalism. He who has the bucks gets the rights.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
You shouldn't, and I'm piss off about paying for a land line that I never use. I pay $40/month for my cell phone, with free long distance and (US, where there is service) roaming. I then pay $30/month for a measured line land line phone (Pay per minute, a normal unlimited local calls line would be $45/month) plus $50/month for my 720k DSL line (I could go to the slower 256k DSL and save $10/month).
I'm mad, I wrote the local PUC and they said "We are sorry, but we have no interest in helping you". I'm waiting for something else to come along that will work.
MCI called me up last summer and offered me a much better deal on local service. Plus some swag (I think it was free Blockbuster rentals for 6 months or so). I was for it, spent about 8 minutes answering questions. And at the end, I said "Hey, I have DSL, that's okay, isn't it?"
They said no. Which suprised me because for some unknown reason, I don't trust corporations much.
Dang kids can't play fair.
Merry Xmas, I'm about to get suckered into fixing relatives computers all day. Lots of "The reason why your Windows 98 crashes so much is because it's Windows 98". Neverending circle that one is.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
You really pulled that one out of your ass, didn't you? PS: Cable is more suited to those who need speed.
Here here! I'm on dialup, looking at dsl, and a bit flustered to find that it seems cheaper everywhere else. SF "broadband" offerings kinda suck despite the tech industry we have here. IIRC JWZ has volunteered DNA's roof for an antenna. Have you heard of any local efforts beyond SFBWUG (sic) to implement a city-wide wireless network? Imagine SF with repeater antennas every three blocks. Perhaps an ISP could implement "viral" connectivity -- either pay or freeload and repeat (i.e. extend the coverage)?
I have been waiting for over three YEARS for SBC to deliver DSL to my residence. I live in the digital backwater of Dallas, TX (in the city limits) just a few miles from the once mighty telecom corridor. My SLOW dialup service has been OK as long as there are no probllems. When there are problems, the "service representitives" are useless, clueless, troubleshooting diagram followers with no backup from anyone who actually knows anything remotely related to ISP operations. There is no customer service number in case the problems encountered are not solved ! Even my SLOW dialup connection is rate limited ! They cut off my dial up connection after several hours even when I'm actively browsing. They cut off my dialup connection after several hours when I'm attempting long downloads. Contrary to what they say on their stupid commercials they have spent millions on lawyers fees (and political contributions) to keep the most powerfull lock they have on their customers, the pair of copper wires running to the houses, out of the reach of their competitors. Ma Bell LIVES, she just changed her name to SBC.
http://www.dslextreme.com/ . Yes, they work with the Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers and you have to deal with your ILEC providing the Last Mile of connectivity, but they allow you to run servers on their system, you get a static IP, they don't block ports, and they even have a game server! If you are in CA you don't have to settle for stupid ILEC DSL with crappy Terms Of Service and PPPoE...there is an alternative! DSL by geeks, for geeks!
I work for the big dog AT&T and I can tell you that *Broadband* DSL is not affected by the rings of the Bells. However, Comcast now has our former BB market--we sold it off. It *was* confusing and now it's out of the house. Traditional local phone service, where we offer it, has to be in areas where either Southwestern Bell or Verizon service--as a rule. It's whether or not the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies) will sell us the stuff. Otherwise, we can't provision the service. Broadband is a digital market and--to the best of my understanding--is not affected by SWBTP. Regular DSL, however, is. I'm in the LD/landline biz so I will find out more and post more later!
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
amount of hot air.
-- Thomas L. Martin
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...