Slashdot Mirror
Telecommunication Customer Service Worldwide
imin8r writes "
Whirlpool writes that an
Telstra, Australia's largest Telco (who
also happens to own all wholesale access to ADSL in Australia),
had rejected an ADSL user's
application from a small ADSL provider, but subsequently accepted their own
ADSL application from the same user. The funny thing is, the smaller ISP sells
exactly the same service as Telstra as they are a Telstra reseller. Both
providers use the same line, same exchange and same equipment. However, the
story doesn't end there. When Telstra was approached by the aggrieved user
explaining what had happened, Telstra offered him a settlement to keep quiet.
When he didn't, they disconnected his already connected ADSL service. One of the
arguments for Telstra's bad track record with customer service is the fact that
they were previously government owned but are now partly privatised (and listed
on the stock exchange). As a result they own a lot of the infrastructure which
has been paid with by taxpayers money, but any new Telco players still need to
use a lot of Telstra's infrastructure. I'd like to know whether full
de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has
benefited customer service and also what effect it has had on providing
innovative services.
"
RTFA? I didn't even have to bother reading past the <TITLE> tag to award it an automatic (+5, Funny).
Commercial monopolies behave just as badly, if not much worse beacuse there isn't local accountability; ie, a government representative you can call and bitch at
We should only favor corporations when there isn't a monoopoly. Converting a government monoploy into a commercial one is *always* worse for customers... although, it is often a great deal for the politicians who made it commericial.... and of course, the new owners who realize a windfall wihout any real work...
Then we said, "NYNEX sucks."
Then we said, "Bell Atlantic sucks."
Now we say, "Verizon sucks."
The name may change, but the suck remains the same.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I know I've personnally had more problems with customer service in recent years. The companies I've delt with moving around the states don't seem to care. I know I used to have a better time years ago when the Northeast was controlled by one carrier.
You eluded to this as well in your paragraph but the biggest problem for the small local providers is that the infrastructure is still owned by one large provider so breaking in is hard to do.
Telstra terminates ADSL whistleblower's connection
Dan Warne | Saturday, 6:00 pm | Telstra
EXCLUSIVE |
Telstra visited ADSL whistleblower Steve Mann's home this week, serving him with a disconnection notice after he told Whirlpool the carrier appeared to favour Bigpond in ADSL line testing.
Mann raised the alarm that Telstra Wholesale had rejected his application for iiNet ADSL, but subsequently accepted a Bigpond ADSL application.
When Mann questioned Telstra over this, the carrier offered him a generous settlement in exchange for dropping the complaint, including the continuation of his ADSL service, a refund of his installation fee, ongoing discounts and triple his monthly download allowance.
But after he went public with the information, the telco reneged on the settlement and told him it could no longer provide the ADSL service.
"There could be dozens -- even hundreds -- of Bigpond customers outside of the acceptable ADSL range that Telstra has slipped through the service qualification process," one industry insider said. "Telstra is probably only having a sudden bout of ethics with Steve Mann's case because he drew attention to it."
Mann said the senior Telstra manager dispatched to his home to serve the disconnection notice had difficulty concealing his 'disgust' for Whirlpool and Mann.
However Telstra spokesperson Kerrina Lawrence told Whirlpool the visit to Mann's house was not intended to intimidate him.
"It was meant to be a frank and open explanation and was by no means meant to be heavy handed in any way; there weren't lawyers present or anything like that."
~
Mann told Whirlpool the ADSL service had been working fine despite his property being more than 5KM from the exchange.
"In fact it has worked flawlessly during a period of time when our house has twice been damaged by severe rain storms. I told them how our satellite television service dropped out but our ADSL service continued to work. This evidence seems to contradict their suggestions that ADSL should not work at my house," he told Whirlpool.
"I have grown to depend on this ADSL service and am willing to fight hard to keep it. It has now meant I can leave the office early, spend time with the children, and then continue working at home connected to the internet with a service that actually works better than the service at my office. My business involves the transfer of a lot of data files and the ADSL service has made working at home practical whereas a dial-up service is simply not adequate," he said.
"I suggested to them that shareholders of Telstra should be concerned that Telstra is unjustifiably turning ADSL business away. I cannot be the only person who is being denied an ADSL service when in fact it would work perfectly. I presume I am just one of the few who actually have it first and Telstra is going to remove it."
Mann originally wanted to sign up to iiNet ADSL, but his application was rejected by Telstra Wholesale. Although Telstra told Whirlpool its service qualification was fully automated, Mann's later attempt to sign up to BigPond ADSL was successful, clearly demonstrating that the sign-up process had an element of discretion in it which allowed a Telstra employee to manually approve the Bigpond connection.
iiNet Managing Director Michael Malone said he had feared Telstra would take this action.
"I predicted that this is exactly what Telstra would do. The publicity that this event has generated has embarrassed them," he told Whirlpool.
"But they should be getting utterly reamed for this," he said. "I really can't believe they are being this stupid."
Telstra's Kerrina Lawrence said the telco had considered offering alternative broadband technology to Mann at ADSL pricing, but had ruled out doing so because it would create a precedent for other customers.
But she said Telstra was developing broadband technologies that could be available to Mann in the future such as a non-timed ISDN
Similiar horror stories here but on a much grander scale. My part of the world (Rural Massachusetts) had limited high speed options for businesses. T1 from Verizon started at $750.00 for the line (ISP was extra). Then the city fathers, etc. got together and convinced Global Crossing to come in (before they went belly up). Now T1 with internet from GC at most $500.00. Long Distance was cheap, etc. However, the last mile was still Verizon lines. Right before GC came in a customer order and had installed a verizon T1 in less than 8 business days. For the same service under Verizon (A subcontractor) that service can take MONTHS).
Fact of life, those who have don't want to share.
Lilu Dallas Multipass?
Gawd I hope so!
When the government sells the rest, which they will soon, will they be a nice helpfull company. I doubt it.
Also anyone think its wrong for govs to sell off a asset of the state which affects future generations with out referendum etc.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
If there's any aspect of customer service that is seen as a "benefit" in the .01% and the top execs all get a
US telecom industry, it's is perceived as a system fault and an unnecessary
expense, corrected immediately, and the cost to eliminate the benefit is added as
a surcharge on your bill. The stock price rises
1 Mil bonus for the quarter for cost containment.
I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has benefited customer service
HA! customer service improving....now that's a laugh....
The guy lives more than 5 km from the local exchange, which is supposedly their rule for qualifying people for DSL.
He tried to get service with another ISP and was rejected because he was more than 5km from the exchange.
He then tried using their service and was accepted (for unknown reasons -- apparently some sort of favoritism for their own service). It worked fine, even though it was supposedly too far away.
He complained that they were giving themselves special treatment.
They said "Well, you're beyond our limit, and since you're demanding equal, fair, and consistent rules, we're turning you off."
I mean.. he really got what he asked for. He shouldn't have ever been qualified for DSL service (and the fact that he was shows something sneaky is probably going on), but they really solved it correctly by shutting him off.
Before deregulation, we had dial phones with no features and now we have tons of choices and tons of features. I think that this has been a good thing. I pay 24.99 flat rate for home service with no taxes. This includes my long distance within the USA and every feature that you can have with a calling plan.
I have SBC, so YMMV.
I called them to get DSL when I moved (within Cali). I went to DSLReports.com and saw where the CO is and how far away I am. I called SBC -- They told me I'm too far for DSL (yeah, right, I'm like 1/3 the max distance).
So, I called Covad (who uses SBC's last-mile line) and got 1.5/384 with them. SBC's customer service doesn't know what they are doing, and what's worse is they don't really care to know.
Their office hours are horrible (I mean, most huge non-monopolies have 24hr customer service), you can't phone in a payment easily, if you get online billing, you don't get a paper bill anymore.
And the sad part is they seem to be on par with all the other baby-bells.
Just my rants on my local phone monopoly and they
're lame customer service....
(although AT&T's local phone customer service is 10 times worse from what I hear)
- Rushdan
Wireless is the only way out of this mess. I have a wireless high-speed connection. It is a fine piece of technology. As soon as QOS issues are resolved for the long term, I'll put my phone service on it full time as well via VOIP.
This is not the phone companys' fault. By "this", I mean this whole mess of line and plant ownership. I can definitely see their point of view. At the same time, I can see the point of view of those who want to use that public(?) infrastructure to roll out their own services. I just don't see these issues with the lines and plants being solved any time in the next 15 years.
Wireless solves many problems. I know there are scalability issues, but I think these will be solved. QOS is another issue as compared to hard wire, but this will get resolved as well.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
which works because we've declared that is doesn't work and we can't have facts contradicting our official policy. Furthermore, your informing people of this unfortunate situation directly violated our "Don't ever say anything we dislike" agreement, quite prominent in the EULA you would have seen if the service had worked which it never did, despite the fact that it did.
In my opinion, deregulation has led mostly to the development of marketing.
I've seen no improvements in customer service, billing accuracy or service. I have seen thousands of advertisements, marketing gimmicks and 'unbeatable deals.' Telemarketing and junk mail from telephone, mobile phone and internet service companies are at an all time high for me. It is no easier to get accurate information about services. It is nearly impossible to compare services between providers and find any appreciable differences. You can easily find numerous claims that one service is better than the rest and will change your life - with no evidence beyond the new ring tones you can get for your mobile phone.
For example, DSL Service. Deregulation has made it so that is exceptionally profitable (well...okay...maybe) for DSL services to be offered in Urban Centers, so that there are many competing companies offering service. On the other hand, live just 250 feet past the City Limits (as I do), and there are zero, none, nadda, companies willing to have the service go to you.
I'm beginning to wonder if we don't need a Telecommunications version of the Tennessee Valley Authority. For the American History Impaired, the TVA was created during the Depression to bring electricity to Appalachia, and other rural regions, and it accomplished it's goal of extending the grid to virtually everyone in America. Something similar could/should be done to encourage cooperatives or the like for Internet bandwidth.
Funny, replace "Telstra" with "Telia" and "Australia" with "Sweden" and the story still tells the truth.
Deregulation, improved customer service. No way! Customer Service sucks. Deregulation has improved pricing and available features.
"We're the phone company. We don't have to care."
I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has benefited customer service and also what effect it has had on providing innovative services. "
Basically, I'd say that customer service has gone into the toilet, while innovative services have been rolling out - maybe not as quickly as some would like, but progress is being made. The problem is that in the rush to get new products into the marketplace and sieze the high ground, customer service has been left in the dust, viewed more as a cost center than an opportunity for competitive advantage...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
heh... Anyone from Sweden who has had anything to do with Telia (previously government owned telco, now at least partially privatised) will tell you some great horror stories about just this.
I can't help thinking that the government should handle issues like the infrastructure in a country, whether it is roads, electrical backbone or network backbone. Sure, if some company likes to compete, that's fine. But just making a company out of a huge investment by tax payers doesn't seem right.
I recently signed up for phone and DSL service from a local ISP, SoverNet. They said I'd have service within three weeks. Which is crazy anyway, that's a hell of a long time! But I figured, fine, the price was right and Verizon was asking for the same amount of a wait. SoverNet gives me a due date, it comes, I still have no phone. I call them, and they say that Verizon does all the actual work on the lines because they own them. They were supposed to come to my house, but for some reason they did not, and no reason was given. SoverNet says that there's nothing they can do, considering that they're a small, local company and Verizon is a "Baby Bell" with tons of money and lawyers behind them. They are under no obligation to actually do the work that they're contracted out to do. Since I wasn't going to be paying them any money, (going through a different provider) what's the hurry in setting me up with a phone line? And SoverNet said that I wasn't an isolated case, that they've been having trouble getting Verizon to show up and do the work they're supposed to do. At the moment, I still have no phone service at my house.
In conclusion, I feel that the government is who should own the phone infrastructure. Deregulating doesn't really work because the owners of the lines can still use their muscle to squash the competitors.
Whether the largest Telco (and wholesale access everything to the Australian is owned adsl happens in the Telstra and some Australia to), application of the adsl user from the small adsl contributor was refused, continuously itself adsl application from the same user being accepted, book thing as for the eddy. As for strange thing, it meaning that they who a smaller isp sale method same exactly are are the resale person of the Telstra, the Telstra. As for the contributor both the same line, the same exchange and the same device are used. However, it does not end the story there. When something which happens the Telstra getting near it is to be tormented by the explanation of the user, the Telstra offered the solution to him because it maintains gently. He the time, as for those cut the adsl service which that already is connected. Weaving/grade one of argument because of the truth connection customer business of the Telstra is bad was before the government where those are owned, but, the fact, now privatised partly (with the list being done in the stock exchange). As a result they paid, with the money of the taxpayer who owns many of subsystem but, it is necessary the Telco also for the which new player still to use many of subsystem of the Telstra. The fact that as for me complete deregulation of the American Shaun industry which brings what kind of effective fruit " to the offer of progressive service contributes to connection customer business, in addition how knows is desired.
I think you'll see these sort of problems anywhere you go. I live in Alberta whose encumbant Telco (Telus) was formally government owned (AGT). Getting access to the infrastruce has also proven difficult for others trying to get into the *DSL game. One ISP in Calgary (Cadvision) put up quite a stink about the whole fair access thing. Eventually they were bought by Telus anyways. Governing bodies trying to ensure equal access may try (CRTC ... don't get me started on this one) but the encumbant usually has the power anyways.
I like gay anal sex
Telecommunication deregulation in the US has had little impact on the customer service arena, in my experience. When US West was our provider, we called their support services US Worst: they were even worse than phone support for Macintosh users from online banking call centers. Then, they got bought by QWest, and they got even worse.
As for innovative services, I'd say that the dereg has had some positive impact on innovative services: you can buy some DSL connections without the local bell, but only sometimes. It's forced me to abandon my landline phone for cell-only access, which works mostly because cell phone competition is pretty good (probably a positive result of dereg).
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
As a medium sized Telecom integrator - On average, we get our T1s terminated by Verizon and Bell South in 30 to 45 days. Our Qwest lines are usually done in under 15. The Bells are much better now than when they were under the AT&T umbrella - but quite a bit of collusion still exists. The Feds didn't go far enough to rip that monopoly apart.
I don't know about the US, various parts of Europe have undergone are undergoing such transitions. From what I've seen (I'm an ex-pat Briton) or read in The Economist, deregulation seems to come with regulations and industry watchdogs. For deregulation to work, I would guess that the incumbent needs to be forced to share their networks, and also be forced to share them at a reasonable rate. What defines a reasonable rate is subjective, but defined by an unbiased industry watchdog that has powers to punish violations. Personally, I think the last mile infrastructure should be split out and managed by separate companies that aren't allowed to provide services to customers... although that might be too late for Telstra if they're already partly privatised.
Here in Canada, I'm reasonable happy with the way DSL is working. I get good prices and good services from an independent ISP (they cater to "techie" people, and offer little tech support, and no crappy portal web sites and service limitations.) That doesn't mean I don't think the setup is perfect (there's still too much bias to telco's wholly subsidary ISP company), and that I'm not happy that I have to have voice service on the land line from the telco.
There must be a clear distinction made between deregulation and delegation.
In many cases around the world, including Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan (Not sure about the US, someone can clarify), xDSL service may be delegated to a 3rd party to eliminate some of the burden on the call centres of the larger Telcos, although the backbone, routing equipment, and in some cases even consumer equipment, remain property of the Telcos. When delegation exist, there is little the consumer can do but put up with the hot air and incompetence of these big, monopolistic telcos. The reason why these "delegated" smaller agents have as poor a service as their larger counterparts because they have NO incentive to put a smile on their face. The consumer prices are just the same, the costs incurred by smaller companies to the large Telcos are at parity, and consumers choose whatever they hear is best from their best friend's neighbour's dog.
In very VERY small cases where true deregulation exist and competing organizations can lay their own fibre-optic lines to serve the community, prices are driven down and service improves drastically.
Such is the price of false deregulation.
------
Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
After it got privatised, things improved significantly for customers, but that's because they were so bad, they had no place to go but up (improvement). With private capital infussion, Telmex modernized its technology, hired more and more competent staff, and started offering new services. This sounds good, however it's really not.
The problem when you privatise something like this is that you get an "instant monopoly", and that's what Telmex is. With 95% market share for land lines, over 50% long-distance, and 70% cell phone share, all competitors face an uphill battle, plus they also have to depend on Telmex's infrastructure to provide their services. Telmex owns the land line infrastructure and, as such, is the only provider of ADSL service, leaving all other competitors at a serious disadvantage.
All in all, it would appear to be a bad idea to do this; a possible option would have been to sell the former state-owned company in parts, to avoid having a single point of control. Another would be having better government controls over the company (right now the federal telecommunications commision, COFETEL, is basically a puppet, unable to put telmex in check for their anticompetitive behavior). Because right now it looks like all competitors will eventually be out of business, either by bankruptcy or giving up on competing with a monopoly such as Telmex, and then the Telmex will probably have no incentive to keep innovating, which so far has been the only positive consequence of the privatisation. (ok, and they now install new phone lines in an average of 10 days)
Deregulaiton of the telecom industry has been a welcome change. Look at the old AT&T or Bell Atlantic, althought these were not government owned or ran, their sheer size and lack of competition was evident through their, "if you don't like it, go somewhere else" attitude, there was no other place to go. Telstra is in that very position right now. Being in control and owning of facilities that start-ups need gives them that AT&T power. Competition is being stifled by them, deregulation would force Telstra and the likes to lease lines and/or parts of their network to start-ups, promoting competitive pricing and alternatives. Remember regulated or not, these companies depend on the end-user (the customer) to pay the bills that power these networks.
I live in New Jersey (armpit of american) and the DMV (dept. of motor vehicles) was state run. It was the worst experience anyone could or should have to endure. Since the DMV has be privatized, I no longer have to sit there all day just to get a new picture license. Efficiency and customer service has improved greatly. Don't get me wrong, it could be better but there is always a start for change and improvement.
All it's done is make AT&T, I mean Illinois Bell, I mean Ameritech, I mean SBC whine more.
That's right, SBC, Southern Bell Corporation. But wait, you say, I thought Illinois was in the north. It is, the monopoly the US government forced to break up is just recreating itself.
Now it's forced to look like it's playing with the others. Which really just makes it better for them. It gives them something to whine about and a way to get by with more crap.
When i finally decided to cough up the dollars to get a cable connection (broadband in australia is very expensive)... two days after I had applied for telstra cable they introduced a 3 GB cap....so another phone call and the installation contracter was stopped just hours before the proposed installation. Telstra Cable - AU$89 per month for a whopping 3GB of data (inc. uploads) Avg phone service $AU 100 per month for landline calls, avg AU$80for mobile calls (reasonably light usage) so you can easily fork over ~$350 too australias favourite monopoly per month. and dont bother with your impulsive currency conversions, funnily enough australians get paid in australian dollars.
I can't say it's done wonders. I was pretty young when they broke up the government monopoly into the baby bells.
Our region is/was run by Ameritech, now gobbled into SBC and has fought off competition pretty well, while trying to increase it's own competition.
If I am to believe the stories I hear, customer service is considerably degraded.
There really isn't much incentive to roll out new services by the local market leader. They own the lines and extract substantial toll from any who wish to compete. I have yet to really find an incumbent provider stepping out to give me modern services quickly.
2 years ago I was on ISDN, and unable to get DSL from anybody ("lack of electronics...yada yada"). I shopped for months for something better than my $130/month for ISDN.
Finally, I was able to get a quote for "Business Class Internet Cable" from the local incumbent cable company. They still wouldn't sell me personal cable internet service. I then took the quote up to a local executive and asked why only business service was available (it took some work to find him). The next day, they called to offer me residental service.
Four months later, DSL became available. So the marketers say "competition works." Unfortuneately, it works REALLY SLOW with getting big companies to move and really fast at killing the small ones.
I'm not reall privy to the details of how the telco's run their interoperability these days. But it's taken a long time (as in just last year) to get any seemingly meaningful competition for basic phone service. As for Internet connectivity--we wish there was.
As long as the incumbent local/regional monopoly-like carriers have no financial incentive to roll out new services or cut rates, we only see things continue as they have with higher rates.
I moved in the past year, and now I have two options again--ISDN or local incumbent cable. I don't forsee any change in the next two years, except seeing my bills go up at the whims of the local competive monopoly.
I generally try not to make them upset, as it would cause me to suffer. (The cowardly way: Take the package and be silent or at least anonymous about the evil DSL methods.")
... bankruptcies and people flying airplanes
into buildings.
Big company screws up, offers settlement. Morally correct person denies settlement. Crowd goes wild....WHY?
He should have taken the settlement. What moral victory is this going to offer him? Now it's public and they won't set any new precedents here.
Duh.
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
The break up of the bell monopoly wasn't about increased customer service. Which is good, as service levels are an order of magnitude less. It is about price. Competition drives pricing down. It also increases innovation. If the old bell monopoly was still intact, we wouldn't have DSL service but ISDN might be rolling out sometime in the next two decades, and you would pay by the byte.
Competition = customer service down + prices down + innovative service additions up.
One Bell System - it works
$ _
I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has benefited customer service and also what effect it has had on providing innovative services
I'll let you know when it happens. In America, we have exactly the same situation. Ma Bell wasn't a part of the government, but a government sanctioned monopoly. The baby bells still control the wire, and still use and abuse the government to hurt competitors while all the while petitioning the regulators to "allow more copetition" by which they mean "allow them to use their monopoly positions to stifle competition."
Twenty years later, we have 3 1/2 RBOCs instead of 10, and AT&T gutted and left to wither (their own fault) in long distance competition which is actually somewhat competitive.
As far as DSL hell, Verizon, Qwest, and SBC/PacBell, they play the same tricks on their customers, competitors, and government regulators. Every once in a while, a state PUC is forced to take action because the violations are so flagrant, or because a new governor wants to shake the money tree.
> I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the
> telecommunication industry in the United States
> has benefited customer service and also what
> effect it has had on providing innovative
> services.
The telecommunication industry in the United States is far from fully de-regulated.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I've said it many times and I'll say it again, I get better cheaper DSL service in bumfuck Taiwan way the hell out on the tip of the island miles from any neighbors than my friends in San Diego and LA do. /., I got modded down as flamebait, so I'll do it AC this time.
But last time I mentioned it on
Once again, the US telecoms monopolies suck and the apathetic assholes who don't do shit about it, my fellow Americans, are to blame. It's so sad to talk to people back home. They act like the monoplies that enslave them are in their best interests. It's really pathetic. And it's always this crap about. . . well at least I'm not in bumfuck wherever where it's soooo terrible. They have no idea.
I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has benefited customer service and also what effect it has had on providing innovative services.
Canada telco have been partly deregulate. I say partly because there is still ton of regulation. The only place where I could see that this profited customer is long-distance charges but even that is going up again. IMHO, my telco (Bell Canada) have the worst customer service of all the utility I have to deal with. Strangely, the utility that have the best customer service (again, IMHO, YMMV, etc) is my electricity provider which is owned 100% by the governement.
:wq
If you're not going to go all the way to clan-based anarcho-capitalism then at least have the decency to admit that in return for the service of protecting property rights against acts of war or crime, including any form of force and fraud, government should tax net assets, in excess of levels typically protected under personal bankruptcy, at a rate equal to the rate of interest on the national debt, thereby eliminating other forms of taxation.
Seastead this.
IMHO, commercial telcos are interested in 1 thing, PROFIT. Not much R&D, no competetive pricing. Abysmal customer service.
Read Jim Baller's remarks for a synopsis of technological rollout.
He's got a written letter from Telstra which states that they entered a settlement agreement and lays out the terms of that agreement.
What is to prevent him from walking into court and obtaining damages?
Does Austrailia have small claims court and automatic damage multipliers for consumer fraud like in the US?
DSL has been a total crapshoot since its inception. Some people get it and never have a problem with it (most people in the first two or so miles. When things get stretched to their limits though is when things get wonky.
Things are always ugly when you have vendors working with other vendors. As anyone who has any concept of how a good customer service relationship should work knows, the customer is almost always wrong about facts and always right when with regards to their opinion. For the most part a company's structure is a total mystery to the customer. Now, when you are an ISP who has a customer and you are providing them a service that you, yourself only have a small amount of control over and you in turn become the customer of another company (or as was the case when I would ISP tech support, a lot of other companies) things tend to get a little confused, not only for you but also for your customer. You have to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out who to contact for what as well as a lot of time trying to ascertain whether or not there is anything you can do on your end to make the problem disappear.
In other words, it's a clusterfuck (if you will pardon my foul lingo). So deregulation, while good for the average businessman, is not necessarily so good for the consumer.
I personally feel that the nature of this technology makes it a poor choice for the average Joe User (userj?) in this country. There are too many factors that make it a poor choice for a non techie (example PPPOE, distance variations, cordless phones, multiple vendors, lamps, the tides, wind direction, sunspots, liver spots, etc). Cable is by far the better choice for our geography and our average level of intelligence and patience.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
> Anyone out there who could translate this into English for me?
Not sure what there is to misunderstand, but here you go:
These two ISPs are part of Telstra, the taxpayer-funded broadband network that was, at least partially, deregulated (no longer government-owned). Mr. Mann was told by Telstra that he could not get ADSL service through the first company. When Mr. Mann then went to the second company, Telstra said there was no problem, even though the service is identical and the lines (I believe) are all owned by Telstra & not the individual companies. Therefore, if Mr. Mann could get access to one, he should theoretically be able to get access to the other.
When he pointed out this fact to Telstra, they cut off his service altogether and offered him a settlement to never mention it to anyone (AKA "hush money"), as that inconsistency could look bad to a third party. Also, Mr. Mann seems to claim that the person sent to his house to do the disconnection was pretty mean/rude about it, suggesting that was intentional by the company to keep him quiet (that may or may not have been the point, I could have been reading more or less into it than was really there).
one word:
no.
deregulation just means some company got the government/populous votes to outright steal what taxpayer money paid to create.
take a look at california's energy history in conjunction with the bank roll of current republican "elected" campaign financing, and the whole vile pile of snakes becomes pretty clear.
oh, and haliburton also gets the contracts to rebuild iraq, despite their ties to enron.
nice.
rhy
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Deregulation always lowers prices and improves customer service. Governement meddling will never help the improve the situation.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
You want us to fix that rat's-nest of wires behind your house? That will be $2000. It works, so we won't fix it unless you pay for it.
Tells me you were cursed with a tech who didn't take much pride in workmanship. When the Bellsouth tech installed the junction box for my DSL, he did probably the prettiest wiring job I could possibly have asked for. Even re-routed my TV cable, ground lines, etc. so it looked nicer & more organized. When he had the bud box at the road open, it was the same way. In our brief conversation, it was easy to tell that the kid was *proud* to work for the phone company.
Of course, I live in a very small town, so it's highly likely that I'll see that guy at the hardware store or WalMart or wherever. So he does a little extra neat work so I'll think better of him. Or maybe our town just has a terrically "A.R." tech. Either way, it's the way it ought to be.
I can't help it if I'm lucky...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Wireless isn't the solution to anything. As soon as wireless vendors ramp up to userbases approaching the normal telco world, expect increased regulation (in addition to the spectrum regulation and local tower-size/placement hurdles) at the local level as well.
Of course, being government regulated is only half the problem, the rest is the problem associated with customer service generally, which is falling to abyssmal levels overall. I remember when you could get a remote circuit test of a residential POTS line after 8 PM *on the weekend* from good ol' Northwestern Bell.
Now I have to work extra hard just to talk to someone at Qwest with a pulse during the week, during business hours.
Boutique ISPs offering high speed IP may feel great today, but don't worry, they have a long way to fall.
I work as technical support in the telecommunication industry for the customer care that you people are constantly whining about. The reason some people suck and some don't is because we're harvesting these people from the same crop of people who constantly piss and moan about customer care or service or whatever else isn't giving away service. You should consider yourselves fortunate to get people who don't just hang up on you the moment they speak to you with the attitudes that most of you out there possess. This is just the same old story over and over again where the group that doesn't have hates the group that does have. It will always be this way because people and businesses are greedy and self-centered. It's just ok for you when it's the customer being that way, but if someone representing a business actually treats someone as they deserve they are villainized.
i work for a small ISP that provides (among other things) dial-up and DSL service. we are in close contact with BellSouth. i have also known several people who have worked for BellSouth as contractors.
if anything, deregulation has made more visible the systemic incompetence of these quasi-sort-of-kinda of government entities. we have "customer service" problems all the time with BellSouth, especially concerning quality of phone lines and dial-up customers. we have a small but steady stream of people that switch from BellSouth's DSL to ours (even though it is more expensive) just so they can talk to a person in support that has a slight clue what ADSL is.
from my experience and reports from my friends, i would say that the customer service problems and infuriating behaviour experienced by many BellSouth customers is caused by sheer incompetence. i do not think that BellSouth is malicious (as in this story's example). they really have no cluse what they are doing. before deregulation this fact was more obscure (for a number of reasons like accessibilty and complexity of technology) and now it is plainly visible.
British Telecom pull the same kind of dirty tricks in the UK.
I had a friend try to get Easynet ADSL - BT still do the end user installs and testing, they said his line quality was too poor.
So he phoned BT to come round and do an ADSL install for BT's own BT OpenWorld install, which they did.
He then logged on to his BT supplied ADSL router (via their web based interface) and simply put in his Easynet authentication details and he was instantly routed through Easynet (I actually watched him do this, and saw it worked fine).
He called BT and obtained a full refund for his BT service (on the grounds they are lying weasles).
There service (even commercial ADSL) is awful in any case, they do all sorts of rate limiting and obvious firewalling and stupid routing tricks (even on coporate accounts with externally accessible IP's!) and then lie about it for months. They denied flat out rate limiting P2P clients, until hordes of P2P users got together, did network through put reports and went public with it (thus forcing BT to admit they had been lying to comsumers).
At another company, I worked on a software development contract where they broke our routing for two weeks due to a routing loop are were too utterly stupid to admit there service was broken, even though of other users in the same subnet were effected and I sent them endless trace routes.
Once they refused to open a ticket because 'routing loop' was not a valid fault type in their help desk software!
The next time I complained it turned out they simply closed right away without saying anything or getting in touch (after pretending it was still open for days, which I later was told was not true, by BT) - it was closed with the comment - 'insufficent data supplied'!
They had a routing loop for two weeks, I'd sent traceroutes, time and date stamped for the last four days, they have source, destination, time, and the two addresses on their network that were looping the traffic, as well as a working traceroute to the destiation via another provider, what did they want me to do? Log on to their router and fix it for them?
In response I sent them a URL to a technical article on 'How to trouble shoot BGB routing loops on a Cisco router', just to make a point.
Anyway, ultimately, the company I was working for refused to pay for the service, BT sent a nasty leagal letter back, saying they'd take the company to court for non payment and said we hadn't reported any faults, and that we were lying. The company I was working for fortunately had kept copies of all correspondance (letters and faxes, as well as emails) and sent an even nastier legal letter back, and untilately secured a grovelling apology from BT (and they were able to cancel the contract).
They are an utter disgrace and oftel ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Disclaimer: I now work for Easynet UK, though I didn't at the time of either of these (in fact for the latter I was able to presuade them to swtich to Easynet).
Repeat after me "All phone companies are evil, but, some are more evil than others." Yes I know it's a take on Animal Farm's "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others."
For example, GTE was one of the most evil phone companies around but then they became Verizon. US West, affectionately referred to as US Worst, is now Qwest, and affectionately referred to as Q-worst.
I work in an outsourced vendor call center for a low rated wireless carrier. And we do have some of the worst tech support. I'll never get one of their phones. I'll give you an obscure clue as to who I work for (It's not Verizon either). We do not offer international text messaging to the Phillipines.
"All phone companies are evil, but, some are more evil than others."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
services paid for by taxpayers only profit the government - when these are "handed over" to private sector they are never handed over as a gift - if that were the case I'd own the electrical grid in my city....
do the taxpayers see their money they put forth for this service ever again?
Probably in "other" public services - for which they are paying taxes allready anyway.....
The idea of getting different stories from Baby Bells (or other incumbents) vs. resellers is nothing new. Two years ago when I moved into my townhouse, the prior occupants had had DSL through EarthLink/Covad. Verizon was the local provider, and owned the switches and lines. Covad had the actual DSLAM in my local central office, and EarthLink of course sells service pretty much everywhere in the US, including in my neighborhood. When I tried to order my own DSL service through EarthLink, I was turned down - apprently Verizon told them, "equipment incompatibility". They said maybe my local switch didn't support DSL. I told them that the prior occupants had actually had DSL at my address, but it didn't make any difference; they swore that my line wouldn't support DSL. Later I was told I was too far from the central office, even though I was actually 5000 feet. This went on for some time.
After several more attempts, as well as going through Covad and calling Verizon directly (which did nothing - they just told me to call Covad), I finally discovered (through a friend that had a back-door into their systems - yes, seriously) that the *real* reason I had been denied service was because when I established local service, Verizon had switched the circuit from my house to the central office from a copper line to a fiber one. No amount of inquiry from EarthLink or Covad, or even my own calls, had been able to get them to tell me this.
I had Verizon switch my line back to a copper circuit, but even after this, Verizon *still* turned me down for service! That's right - they still told me (and EarthLink) that my line was incompatible. EarthLink finally told me they would not offer me service, even if I could get Verizon to declare my line eligible for DSL. The reason? It cost them $500 dollars per request to Verizon to establish service - I am not making this up, it was a sales VP who told me this. He told me essentially to go away, and try some other GSP. Of course, there *were* no other GSP's - other than Verizon themselves.
So finally I gave in and called Verizon Online. They too told me that my line was incompatible. When I asked why, I was told that I had a fiber circuit. I told the sales rep that I had had Verizon techs switch my circuit to copper, and they said they believed me, but that their computer systems didn't know that, so they still couldn't take my order. "However," the sales rep told me, "you *could* take your complaint to our Appeals Line".
Uhh... Appeals Line? What the heck is that?
Turns out that Verizon Online had encountered these situations before, and had set up an Appeals Line so that customers could have actual techs (rather than sales reps) manually re-evaluate their accounts for DSL service. So... why didn't EarthLink and Covad just do they same thing? "Oh, we don't make that available to our competitors; it's only for our customers."
In the end, the Appeals department looked at my account, and - shucky-darn, whaddya know! - decided that my line really *was* eligible for DSL after all. And that was that. After 4 months (!!) of trying, I had a DSL account established within a DAY of calling Verizon Online instead of their competitors.
That's what the FCC calls, "fair competition".
Of course, that was two years ago. Maybe things have changed... but somehow, I doubt it.
Bob
3 cent long distance minutes.
The part of your question regarding the benefits of deregulation is that easily answered. A typical intra-state phone call during business hours was ~28 cents a minute in 1990. Now I can use the latest marketing gimick (pre-paid LD phone cards) and get flat rate 2.99 cents a minute, no connect charge, LD anywhere in the country. Let me state that another way, ten years ago people were paying 9 TIMES as much per minute for their LD. It's worth noting that the break up of the Bells was noticably prior to this date, and that it took some time to get to where we are, but if you're willing to tough it out, competition rocks.
Service is exactly as abysmal as it always was, but this is actually a function of what the consumer is willing to tolerate. People will pick the company with crappy service and 3 cents a minute over the company with good service and 6 cents a minute. Until you change that fact, service will remain where it is.
There are many phone companies in the US, but only one local company I can use. That is not a free market, deregulation, or competition for the phone company. They STILL have no incentive to provide me better service.
Until the politicos understand the difference between multiple companies with their own regional markets (read Monopolies) vs. multiple companies all in direct competition, we will still have these same issues.
Someone really needs to break up the telecom unions. They ae really fucking it up for everyone. For instance, today..
For the past 2 weeks, I've had mild static. My filter-based dsl has suffered a bit of on and off. This behavior has happened two or three times before. It usually clears up on its own. Well,
Last week thursday comes, and my line is useless. Too much static and my DSL keeps losing connection.
"Verizon, please have someone come and check my line please. Yes, I'll be home monday."
Monday, today, comes, I'm expecting to be in late for work, having an 8am - 12pm appt. Having suffered from an appointment being canceled by a dentist recently, w/o notice, I decided to call Verizon and confirm my appt is still on for today.
"Friday, you confirmed your line is fine at 7pm."
Friday nite, I was at a v-ball game. WTF?
"Best we can offer is, sometime before 6pm."
The maintenance crews are mostly liars. They don't do their job, and when they do, it's half assed. The gov't/FCC needs to closely watch these companies and make sure they are doing their job... or reregulate it. Really.. or at least get some watchdog organization in place.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I live in Texas, which was controlled by SouthWestern Bell now SBC. We all hate SBC. I had my DSL and my phone with them. Every time I word ask them to repair their crappy DSL, they would try to charge my $60 for what they would admit was their problem. After going through this three or four times, I had finally had enough. My sister had had a good experience with Birch Telecom when she set up here business line. I figured they couldn't be any worse than SBC. The first thing I did was call SBC and cancel my DSL. Then I called Birch. They gentleman at Birch apologized and said they were unable to hook me up because I still had DSL on my line. I told him I had already canceled it. He said he check it late and call me back on Friday. I know you are not going to believe this, but he actually called me back. My service was hooked up 2 weeks later. I haven't had any problems since. I did have 1 billing question. When I called a person, a real live human being answered the phone. I am amazed.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
As far as I can tell, nothing has really changed with deregulation, especially when things like DSL is concerned. Here in the South NJ/Philadelphia area, the FCC gave Verizon a monopoly on DSL and Comcast a monopoly on cable. There is no incentive to lower prices or offer innovative services. If anything, prices have been steadily going up, while quality of the product decreases (lower bandwidth caps, download limits, poor customer service, etc.).
With gov't regulation, someone was at least pretending to control prices so that they did not get too high. Now, no such luck.
(Yes, as a matter of fact, I AM bitter that I am paying $50/mo. for 128up/8?? down cable.)
I would disagree. Living in the center of London, a huge number of costs are far higher based on increased demand for limited space. The obvious example is property prices, which are up to 10 times higher than in rural areas, but almost all my other services, from car insurance to school fees all suffer as a result.
Yet for some services, this centralisation should result in lower costs. For gas, electricity, water etc, a service provider can run one bundle of pipes, lines etc down the center of the road and serve around 1000 flats in my under one mile long road. Yet no economies are offered to me as opposed to someone living a rural hamlet where two miles of pipes may have to be run to serve 30 people.
Generally, this is due to some form of Government regulation or the fact the infrastructure was given away free when monopolies were privatised. No supplier ever seems to offer varying costs based on the real cost of maintaining the distance.
In London we seem to have a constant debate on how property prices are pricing essential service workers out of the capital. If we could halve the cost of utilities this may redress some of the balance. Equally, if people wanting to move to the country and work using broadband had to pay £200 per month instead of £25, this would make their calculations more economic. At the moment for new services, such as broadband, the choice seems to be have it at the standard price or we don't supply it at all. If we had genuinly flexible pricing we may then see rural professionals able to take up more of these services at an economic cost to the supplier. Even then, these costs would fall in time as supply and demand began to kick in.
Bearing in mind that Steve Mann had decided to make a fuss, cutting off his service was crassly stupid. Did they think that this would pacify him and so not tell the world, or did they think that this would be like a red rag to a bull ?
You have got to wonder how little there must between the ears of the Telstra manager that decided this.
What I find very interesting, at least with my local telco (CenturyTel - US), is that they charge a service fee for options that are already installed in the switch. Example, they charge a $2.95 monthly fee to have tone dialing. I work in the telecom sector and have many contacts in the industry. They state that it costs them more in mainetenace and equipment to still provide pulse dialing. That amazes me. So, I called to switch to Pulse dialing and was told by customer service that it was not available in my area!
None that I can think of, unless you mean "innovations" like 128K upstream caps, restrictions on home-based servers (except spammers, of course), surcharges for static IP addresses (or home subnets). I have seen plenty of "innovation" on the billing side, as these companies try to create new "services" that really mean uncrippling that which used to work just fine. Yep, degregulation sure does bring innovation.
Off-topic, but I don't care: I just love the "creative innovation" that comes from all of the proliferation of cable and satellite TV channels. What would we do without 50 pay-per-view and home shopping channels? All of these choices, and old re-runs on "TV Land" are beating most of them. After much effort, "Fox News" finally beat "Sponge Bob Square Pants", but it took 6 aircraft carriers and 350,000 troops to do it. Yep, deregulation brings innovation, all right.
I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has benefited customer service and also what effect it has had on providing innovative services.
No. The industry is now in the process of being regulated again. Many xSP's are in immediate danger of going under. The big Telcos quietly make it impossible for the independants to stay afloat.
Our government officials are in their back pockets and there is currently a lot of "back room" deals going on between FCC and Verizon, et. al.
One result is that now the Big telcos will be allowed to jack the equipment and infrastructure leasing as high as they want to. (they say "high enough to be profitable").
It has not helped the customer service one bit. The small ISP's have great customer service. The big Telcos are still as devious and downright evil as they used to be.
Example 1:
4 years ago I signed up for DSL. Long and Short: it didn't work. We tried for 1.5 years. The whole time the telco was charging me for the service with the understanding that I would be re-imbersed once they got it working. I had to keep the account open so they could work on it.
When the time came for me to cut my losses, they refused to reimberse me, and tacked on $2000 in fees. It took 3 (count them THREE) distinct Better Business Bureau cases to get my money back. Each time it was "oh yeah that is off your bill now", next cycle it would be back. Funny, the Better Business Bureau still says it has 0 information on Verizon, despite my 3 documented cases, which I won, all of which prove that Verizon is nothing but a predatory mega-corporation. They are organized crime in it's purist form.
At one point I was told by a Verizon customer service rep:
"You will pay for this. You are just like the rest of them, trying to get something for nothing. You disgust me."
The service NEVER worked! I never transferred the first packet through that DSL line. This was verified by their own engineers.
Example 2:
Last week my wife signs up for the Verizon unlimited long distance plan.
She called them to sign up for this plan, they went over a bunch of stuff and finished up with the rep telling her, and I quote:
"Ok mrs. xxx, everything is in order. You can start using your new long distance plan in 24 hours".
24 hours later I start dialing my cousin in San Francisco, from the east cost... then it hits me.
"Check your account status..." my internal alarm voice shouts.
Not only does the service not start within 24 hours, the account rep hadn't even signed us up! I called back, found this out, and signed up for the plan. The new rep tells me it doesn't start until the next billing cycle. You had better believe I will go through the same drill before using the service.
My point is, if I had just started using it and gotten a $600 phone bill, do you think they would have entertained the notion that the rep had given us bad information? No, I would have been screwed. They tried to steal from me again, as far as I am concerned. I was there when my wife signed up. I know she did it and how. I was listening.
Moral: Big Telcos in the US have gotten worse since deregulation. Now they are shutting the small telcos down, so it can only get worse. They do everything except reach into your pants to take your money. If I wasn't such a bulldog, I would have $4000 STOLEN by them from me in less than 4 years. The Mafioso and Russian Mob could probably learn something about doing crimes from Verizon.
I am not optimistic.
l8,
AC
the post is mistaken in assuming that US telco's are fully de-regulated. They have been partially de-regulated , but are still subject to FCC oversight and mandates across a number of areas. In many ways they still enjoy the privileges of their government granted monopolies.
For a more valid comparison of the affects of privatization on customer service , you should compare a partially de-regulated telco to a fully private alternative - eg. overbuilders.
We'd all like to know what full deregulation would bring. We're still waiting for full deregulation of telecom here in the US. You'll be able to recognize it when it happens. Full deregulation will mean that anybody will be able to offer any kind of service to anyone, anywhere, any time, any way, WITHOUT going to the FCC, state utility boards, usw. That hasn't happened yet, and isn't on the horizon.
What we have here is PARTIAL deregulation: the old, established monopolies have been set free to gouge us, on the condition that they allow a few startups to barely exist, to provide the illusion of competition. The government regulatory agencies still protect the interests of everyone but the telecom users.
See what I've been reading.
I had a long 3 month ordeal back and forth with verizon. The salespeole, and the cancellation department kept assuring me that I would be able to get service, and the service never came on. They cancelled the order 6 times and re-submitted it, sending me 2 modems and connections kits, after all of that they said that for some unknown reason I couldn't get service, and assured me that a manager would get back to me. No calls. no service. They suck. If I were this guy, I'd have been counting my digital blessings. I wouldn't have tried to fight over who was providing the service, after all, wouldn't dealing with them directly probably be cheaper than going through a re-seller anyhow?
Speak for yourself.
Is that like when the farmer has a bull "service" the cow?
Karma? We don' need no steenkeeng karma!
IT has gotten better, at least from my perspective.
I remember when you had to stand in line for hours just to lease a phone, yes lease you couldn't own a phone at the time.
Now you can own your phone.
Then I remember what a nightmare it was if you had to go down to the office for any reason. The last time I was there I was in and out in 15 minutes.
WHen I had an issue with my connection, Verizon sent people to my house twice. The second time the guy hooked a laptop to the phone lines and called another ISP to see what the throughput was. I was not a customer of verizons ISP service at that time, and it was no charge both times.
Now I have verizons DSL, and they just LOWERED my price.
There help desk is often very busy, so the wait during 'normal'hours was about 20 minutes. But when I tlaked to them the resolved my issue very quickly and professionally.
Much happier with them as my ISP then earthlink, who kept saying the issue I had was with my phonle lines, even though I could call any other ISP without a problem.
I upgraded from Dial-up to DSL when I went to verizon.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Telestra probably still has the mind set of a govermental agency. It looks like privatization is not working to well. Testra is only partialy privatised. Its effectivly a "For Profit", publicaly traded, Governmantal Agency. I don't think this a workable combination. Thats too bad. I tend to be a Libertarian ( for those not familiar with US politics, Libertarians like vary small, modular government). Between this and some resent events in the US, it seems that gradual de-governmentation is difficult to impossible. That means that achieving the Libertarian ideal from were we are today is not going to be easy. Succesfull de-governmetation probably involves a complete break. This is just like an Alcoholic can't achieve sobriaty by tappering off of drinking.
The common thread in the problems all of us report with our communications (phone) services is that whether the service is government run or a private monopoly or deregulated competition (or psudo competition) is that in every case, all of the land lines in a given area (or in a nation) end up, by necessity, in the hands of a single owner/company. If Verizon or TelMex, or whoever controls the lines is slow or unresponsive, then "customer service" will suffer. Even if the all-powerful government owns the lines, the problem will persist. Imagine having to wait for your local public works agency yo get around to hooking you up. Imagine having to wait for congress to appropriate the money to lay down fiber. If you want speedy service, you need two+ directly competing providers everywhere. Two companies, two networks, two instances of the necessary physical infrastructure. Anything else is the same song with a different name.
I decided a long time ago that when I finally snap and turn to the dark side in a megalomaniacal frustration-induced rage solely bent on world domination, that I'm taking "The Phone Company" out first.
For the long-standing monopolistic pattern of deception, lies stupidity and fraud, they are ALL undeniably and unquestionably at the VERY TOP of my poop list.
I hate them more than mosquitos.
I hate them more than Michael Douglas.
I hate them more than MS Open Licensing 6.0.
I hate them more than the xxIAs.
I hate them more than credit card companies.
I hate them more than "Charles In Charge".
A POX ON THEM! They only fate they DESERVE is extermination, and *that* even lets them off easy if it isn't grotesquely painful.
Whew! (pant, pant, pant) I feel much better now that that's off my chest....
**DING!**
Whoops! Time for my Lithium.
(Gulp!)
Anyway, guys, thanks for listening to meee rannnt abbousyutt kdkdffffffffffffffffffffffffff
(drool, drool, drool)
[NO CARRIER]
P.S. HUMOR DISCLAIMER: This was supposed to be funny, so let me apologize in advance if I failed. Even though they probably deserve it, I'm not really going to do anything violent or evil to the telcos. Ever. Instead, I am completely willing to deal with my telco-frustration by posting stupid rants like this to
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Remember what the word "Deregulation" means. It means no government controls. Ask anyone from California if they think deregulating their power industry was a good idea.
Government is bulky and bloated, but there really isn't any incentive for screwing people on public service costs. Private enterprise is technically leaner and more efficient, but they have a whole slew of new costs (Marketing, of course, top of the list), and they have no reason not to screw the consumers. That's what capitalism is all about.
Now, theoretically, competition will even all this stuff out and get you the best service for the lowest price, but I've never seen it happen here in the real world.
All this being said, it's the worst of all worlds to have a business that's half regulated and half free. You get all the negatives and none of the positives.
Just my opinion.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Get married. When her name changes, the suck will be a lot less frequent."
And less sucking is good how?
And, unfortunately, suckage is not a zero-sum system.
Brill (yeah, I know, just bear with me) had a neat idea about conglomerate corporations. He was dealing specifically with media but it seems to apply to telco, too. He called it "antergy".
Generally whenever you get a company as large as Verizon, they talk about "synergy", meaning that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. They believe in the second law of suckodynamics, which states that delta suck ~ 1 / delta size.
Brill, OTOH, has pointed to several examples of antergy, where the whole is less than the sum of its parts (for example, ABC news refuses to run bad stories about Disney, but will cover Britney Spears' every move). This seems to be the alternate second law of suckodynamics, delta suck ~ delta size (there's an even more pessimistic version, which is simply that for any epsilon, delta suck >= 0).
Verizon in particular, I think, is a living monument to antergy, and a shining testament to the fact that Bell got broken up the wrong way. Rather than making several regional monopolies, what we need is publicly owned infrastructure and completely open competition for any companies that want to supply service on that infrastructure.
IANAA, but it sounds like maybe that's what the Aussies need too
All's true that is mistrusted
I live in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province with a Crown owned telephone company called Sasktel. Their service is excellent, and cheap. So good and cheap, I don't know or care if others can't use their lines which they paid for. They have the largest fibre optic cabling network in the world.
Compare to when I lived in Calgary, in Alberta, with a private phone company called Telus, whose service was terrible. Cut off the phone with no notice for not paying a bill, that they were supposed to charge to the credit card every month, but neglected to do, 18 months after the fact. Then demanding 2 months service fee to get it activated again. Ick.
Anyhoo, that's the story. Crown in Saskachewan > Private in Alberta.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I was refering to the post itself, but the article wasn't easily decipherable to anyone not famliar with .AU phone systems...
But thanks, your summary clarified a lot for me.
I have one client who was dual-homed ADSL through Optus and iiNet. iiNet is Western Australia's biggest ISP, and they started out well, then went corporate on us and bought everyone else (and meanwhile the quality of service drove off a cliff). iiNet is the only ISP in Western Australia which manages to have more DSL downtime from their own incompetence than from Telstra faults. Optus DSL is much more expensive than most others, even Telstra, but OTOH the only time it ever when down was when lightning razzed the modem on the client's premises.
The same client now has a WestNet DSL (DSLAM by Telstra) and is looking at fibre through Request, whose underlying provider is RUCC for their second home at their new premises. RUCC seems to be nearly as reliable as Optus, and notably cheaper.
Telstra is the only ISP I know of in Australia who normally charges you for traffic in both directions. Some ISPs will charge you only for recieved traffic, others will charge you for the max of recieved and sent, but not Telstra.
Before you ask, I use ArachNet, one of the few surviving Western Australian ISPs which is both competent and small enough to care.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
third party? this is an attempt to buy off a witness in the suit their reseller(iiNet) SHOULD bring against them for unfair competition...
After all, iiNet has an agreement to provide a service for iiNet to resale, which they removed to keep this client to itself, THEN when the client acted like it noticed the difference, they terminated it(and they'd rather this client go to another provider than allow him to go back to iiNet... see comment about 140 other providers... although how many of those are telstra resellers in that area, I wonder...)
Any DSL through Telstra is unreliable, but it seems that the DSL they on-sell through other ISPs is even less reliable than the Telstra-end-to-end flavour. Just a coincidence, of course.
Telstra have this really bizarre way of authenticating you (and their cable authentication is even "bizarrer") and getting a "tunnel reset" out of them can take two days. RUCC's is noticeably more reliable, Optus's has been rock solid for me, and in terms of works-first-time-OOTB Telstra just isn't on the same planet. And they bill you for your traffic both ways.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"I know my wife will want VoIP as soon as it's possible to direct all the phone lines in the house to one central server handling the VoIP protocols for us in our new condo."
Vonage is nice for those with broadband, but little use for anyone else. limited service area, Kentucky isn't even represented, and Indiana has only one area code represented. Don't forget about the weak link in the chain, the person who has a regular POTS line. Doesn't matter if your end is big, if their end is small. It is nice for those who make lots of international calls though, but it will be a while before VoIP will replace the POTS lines. Wireless has a better chance here.
I'm a student in Hull, England, UK. Hull has its own telephone company, Kingston Communications. It used to be owned by the city council but is now half privatised.
The problem is - it has a total monopoly, that is unlike BT it has no competition. However its DSL service is very good but I'm paying £35 per month for it, though I share this with my housemates. So its a pricey but quality service.
I would like to see some competition here from the likes of BT, NTL and others. However OFTEL or OFCOM or whatever they're called now have banned any competition because Kingston Communications are too small and would be crushed by the competition! I say let it be, if they get crushed then thats market forces at work.
i have hellsouth adsl in miami. we have competition in telco here, but, hellsouth still owns the lines and equipment. when i killed them as my home phone provider for the second largest de-regulated company around here, they terminated my dsl as punishment, because apparently, of the twenty people i spoke with there, only one would let me leave my credit card number and continue my account as it was.
yes, they turned off my working ADSL for no reason. after a 10 day outage, it was restored.
these companies are the pits!
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I bought cable modem service from TCI @Home before TCI went bankrupt and got bought by AT&T. TCI as a company sucked, and their "tier one" customer support was biotch-y and rude. Towards the end, when @Home was on the rocks, I spent three and a half hours on the phone arguing with this girl that she needed to take my credit card number so she could pull up my account info and get my bill paid so they could turn my service back on. I had been paying automatically by credit card, but their computer hosed out my info three months earlier, so my bill was three months overdue. She absolutely refused to take any of the following as proof of my identity for the purposes of paying my bill:
Credit Card #
SSN
Phone #
Address
Name
Mother's maiden name
Signing my soul over to her in blood
Finally I got fed up and asked to speak to her supervisor. She insisted that there was no one in the company higher up the ladder than her in terms of customer support. Finally I just hung up and called back, and got another, only marginally less infuriating rep. Then, @Home's assets (as well as TCI's) were sold to AT&T, and things got slightly better. Then AT&T was forced to offload some of it's smaller markets, because they owned way too much of the cable infrastructure for the FCC's liking. So my local cable service was sold to Mediacom, and they actually have a local office. This is good for service, as long as you know to avoid a couple of reps whose names I will not divulge here. So, sometimes 'total' deregulation sucks enormous wookiee, and sometimes it only sucks ewok.
When I left America (2000), there were a ton of different companies. I could use any calling card I wanted. By the time I came back, Verizon had gained a monopoly in a number of areas including New York [non-Verizon calling card numbers were BLOCKED], Virginia [buy a card a 7-11, and it didn't work at their own phones, since their phones were Verizon phones. They were selling Sprint cards.]
The customer service is not good... I'd have to say I don't see a great deal of advantage to privatization, unless you have a lot of money for stock, and inside connections.
As far as I can tell, the privatize/nationalize cycle for big business goes like this: if you have money available, encourage privatization. If you have assets but not money, encourage nationalization. But hey, whadda I know. I'm just a little guy, and don't have the big picture regarding privatization.
But something keeps telling me at the back of my head that the big guys are just big guys, and they don't have the big picture either.
I dunno. I kindof approve of the guy going public. You have to stand up to evil people, or you get 0wn3d.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Thanks.
The reason why customer service sucks is because price is a quantitative tangible measurement and customer service is not. Generally speaking, people don't compare customer service when they shop, they compare price. Therefore, in order to be more competitive, companies have tended toward cutting customer service in an effort to reduce costs.
It's been interesting though to see how the overall reduction in customer service standards has given openings to some companies. Here in Chicago, a new cell service came into town trumpeting that they have award winning customer service. Whether there service is actually good or not, I cannot say, but it does suggest that, in a market with consistently bad customer service, it can be used as a competitive differentiator.
Now, as this applies to the local phone market, it looks likely that it will soon become an uncompetitive market. Here in Illinois, they recently passed legislation to allow SBC to change the rates they charge the CLEC's. I expect to be seeing my DSL bills skyrocket as a result.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Everyone who's ever fought a telco or stood their ground...have been disconnected. I've seen cs reps cut off service with a flick of a switch and men who've spent hours on hold with them got nothing but muzak....they are the gatekeepers. They guard all the doors and hold all the keys.
"Good for the economy" isn't necessarily Good.
Except those things are BAD for the economy. The idea that disasters are good for the economy is the Broken Window Fallacy of economics (google for Henry Hazlitt).
Suppose Mr. Butcher has $100, with which he was going to buy a sport jacket. But a vandal throws a rock through his window in his butcher shop. One might say that it is bad for Mr. Butcher but good for the economy, because it means a job for the glass maker. However on would be wrong.
While it is a job for the glassmaker, it is a job lost for the tailor. And instead of a window and a sport jacket, Mr. Butcher only has a window. So the overall standard of living takes a hit.
First in Santa Clara, I tried to sign up for ADSL from an alternate provider. When the appointment hit the first stage (visit by PacBell to check the line) I was told there were "no more ports available". I asked my alternate provider what that meant and they said that PacBell had no more room in their racks so I would have to wait for them to increase capacity or for a port to open up, please check back with them regularly.
On a hunch, I called up PacBell and ordered the same ADSL. Three weeks later, it was up and running. I called the alternate ISP to inform them of this, but their attitude is "What can we do? We know stuff like this goes on but we have to work through PacBell."
Then I moved to Davis. I tried again to order ADSL through an alternate provider. Davis was only recently "activated" for DSL service so I figured there wouldn't be any port nonsense. Over the next few months my service was utter crap. Every other week I would lose service completely, requiring a trouble visit by PacBell to check the line. My service would mysteriously cut out at about 9PM and suddenly reactivate around 6AM (problem for me being a night owl).
Finally I had enough. Again I called PacBell. They came out and switched me over and from that moment on the problems ceased. Again I called the alternate provider to inform them of this. Again their attitude was "what can we do?"
Off the record, I've heard many many stories from Covad technicians about their customer's pairs being yanked, shorted, or even cut every time PacBell visited the box. Behavior like this may have even been part of Covad's lawsuit against PacBell.
We all know how the story turned out...PacBell is now SBC and because they "suffered" through giving other providers access to their lines, they were rewarded with the designation as a long distance carrier (which they have wanted for over a decade and been denied since they would own the network from customer to customer). Thank you government oversight.
At the end of time when everything in the world is run by five corporations, it'll be Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Exxon-Mobile, Umbrella...and SBC.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
...so you will be put on hold for 37 minutes and 23 seconds.
Please start over as our menu options have change (again) since you entered them 5 minutes ago.
Please continue to hold for the next available representative to insult your intelligence.
We're sorry, but your call could not be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try using the postal service.
Your call may be monitored so our employees can get a good laugh at lunch break.
To reach that department, hang up and dial 1-800-555-1212. The automated system there will tell you the number you need to dial to reach that department.
Please stay on the line. Your call will be answered in the order of descending bribe amounts.
At any time, you may press "0" to speak to an operator who will push the buttons for you and put you on hold for another 37 minutes and 23 seconds.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
No. Our telcos suck too.
I have a friend, lives metro atlanta. I honestly don't think he's paid much at all for phone service now for years. He plays one service off another. He found out you can dicker with them, and they have levels they will go to, so what he does is just work that deregulated system and he switches service providers, snarfs down the freebie sign up bonuses they offer.(this is LD of course I am talking about now) He's got it down to a consumer art form! As he gets to close to the actual "you need to start paying now" point, he just starts his round of calls again, takes that days best "switch to us offer" he can find. It's really funny, but it works!
You get more finger pointing. In my area, you can have *DSL and use a non-telco ISP. When there is a problem all that happens for the first day is finger pointing. It usually requires a conference call to fix any ussue.
Also in my area the telco is using MSN as their primary ISP. How well does that work with Linux or *BSD? I don't want to spend money just to find out.
...complete and utter bastards.
There have been numerous stories in the UK as well of BT turning down ADSL customers on lines until they tried to connect with the BT ISP. One chap was even told that his line was unsuitable for ADSL when he tried to migrate to another ISP after a year of working* connection to BT Openwoe, who collected the email that told him that his line couldn't handle ADSL via his ADSL connection...
*For a given value of working, this is BT we are talking about.
Beep beep.
Deregulation is a complete and total farce. It does not drive down costs for the regular user. It allows the large corporate physical plant companies to dictate price to smaller service start-ups.
The nature of the beast is purely anti-competitive.
What I cannot believe is that Austrailia actually fucked their telephone system up this badly. It's amazing that they modeled their new telephone infrastructure after what the US is doing. The telecommuntions industry is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE. I'm not surprised - elected officials were in charge of the decision making process.
Austrailia had the perfect opportunity to deregulate PROPERLY. This is how it should be done.
1. The government retains ownership of the Copper Plant. ALL of the wires and telephone poles are owned by the government - as well as the Physical plants & Frames (CO's). - Maintainance contracts are bid for - in small sections. Companies can bid for as many sections as they wish to maintain.
2. Service providers CANNOT own physical plant - They can own their own switching equiptment - but no copper plant.
3. The goverment leases the lines to the service providers - thus paying for the maintanance companies that bid for the contract.
That's it - VERY simple you have multiple companies competeing for customers and maintainance contracts - no teleco is going to use the fact that they own the copper plant to muscle out a little guy - because the goverment is where it should be, making sure all of the little children play nice.
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
SBC is horrible. I had DSL through them. When I moved, they signed me up for a new 1-year contract without my knowledge, which reduced my DSL bill by $20 a month during the initial 3 months. However they also signed me up for dial up service (also without my knowledge), for $20 a month. So my bill amount didn't change, and I thought everything was ok. I didn't notice the changes, due to their cryptic listing on the bills. I had it set up to automatically charge my credit card each month (what a mistake!). Anyway, I didn't notice any problems for a while. That is until I decided to go with another provider a couple months later.
They sent me bills for both the DSL and dial up, and it took lots of talking on the phone, and even a threat to go to small claims court to get them to not charge me for a $200 termination fee. They still owe me $30 that they overcharged my card. They charged me for an extra month after I disconnected (that was not part of any partial month).
Not to mention that their DSL and phone reps are completely seperate from each other and neither knows how to do anything about billing problems. You call once, and be on hold with 3-4 different people as they transfer you around.
Customer service with SBC is just horrible.
Here, France Telecom (historical state-owned phone/ISP/mobile company) does exactly the same despite deregulation (enforced by EU commission). Fortunately "courageous" private ISPs are continueing to fight against artificial technical limitations and commercial abuses (when every challenger has to register his customers to you, it's soooo easy to call them and suggest low-price services, arguing you're the number one and that, well you're an ISP and you do it well ...)
Of course FT is so big thanks to happy taxpayers ...
This post is displayed with recycled electrons
I'd like to know whether full de-regulation of the telecommunication industry in the United States has benefited customer service and also what effect it has had on providing innovative services.
What "full de-regulation"? You must be talking about another United States.
I am all in favor of deregulation, but so much that is called "deregulation" nowadays is merely a loosening of the government's leash, and not it's removal. Government is a short-circuit in the marketplace. I will concede that at time the short-circuit may be necessary (police and fire services, etc), but you still cannot expect normal market dynamics when the government is involved.
In the beginning of the US Telco industry, the government granted AT&T a monopoly. Short-circuit number one. Realizing that a monopoly was not good, they compounded their error by regulating the monopoly. Short-circuit number two. Still having problems, they broke up the national monopoly into multiple regional monopolies, keeping the regulations intact. The short circuits were still there. Still later they finally performed their first partial act of real deregulation, and that was to allow competition for long distance service. Suddenly for the first time I started talking to helpful and considerate people when I had a problem! Suddenly I started to actually see my bills lower! But the industry as a whole is still regulated to a huge degree.
The core problem is that ownership of the lines is a monopoly originally granted by the government. Similar government grants of monopoly exist for local cable television providers. Remove this monopoly and you remove the justification for the regulations.
Is it expensive to lay down parallel phone lines next to already existing phone lines? You bet it is! So expensive that it's cheaper to pay to use the existing lines. But if that fee is high enough it WILL be cheaper to lay down duplicate lines. But in the current situation it is against the law to do so, so the local telcos charge up the wazoo for non-telco DSL providers. They've got the small guys over the barrel, with the government's blessings.
But there is no such thing as an ultimate monopoly. There are always alternatives. When the price of paying the monopoly gets too high people will look for alternatives. The price for Windows in the businessplace is too high, and Linux/BSD is making rapid inroads there. But the price isn't high enough yet in the home market so people are content to stick with Windows to write an email to Aunt Sally. Satellite TV competes with the cable monopoly. People are putting up solar panels to reduce their reliance on the monopoly power providers. In terms of internet access, you see the local telco monopoly competing with the local cable monopoly over internet services, and wireless is coming on the scene.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
A 200mhz pentium is worth less than they charged you.
Besides, you need to be living a totalitarian dictatorship in order to have an enitity called "government" that can "own" anything - you know, like the US.
I'm a poor Qwest user (pity me) and I have had a strange experience with Qwest and DSL.
When the company I work for wanted a web connection on the cheap, I suggested DSL. They agreed and Qwest set up the service. The first year was horrible - outages for no reason, customer service reps with only basic knowlege of networking, and a help-desk hierarchy that had me yelling threats (literally) in order to get anything done. I almost lost my job over it. Since then service has improved. No outages since October 2002 (knock wood).
At the same time I was battling Qwest at work, they were trying to sign me up at home. Now, I had this checked out by a service tech when I had my second phone line put in. He claimed I can't get DSL at my home - weak signal. This may or may not be true, but to this day, Qwest will swear that there is no DSL service available at my work (where it has been up for four years) and that DSL is available at my house (where I have been told I can't get it).
This is customer service?
blah blah blah.. change "Telstra" for "Telecom NZ", and you've got the New Zealand version.
It's funny, cause over here, Telstra (who bought Clear a few years ago and became TelstraClear) are the "saviours", and Telecom NZ are the incumbant monolithic faceless telecomms corporation who again happen to own all the infrastructure, and in Aussie, it's the same deal, but the other way around.
Well, that sucks...
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
Let's see:
Tax Dollars build public infrastructure
Private Companies/Persons take over
New Company gets listed on Stock Market
New Company has complete monopoly (from tax dollars)
New Company has horrid service
I'm sure if we can bottle this stuff, we'd have a ton of multinational corporations with economies larger than most countries.
Dammit, someone beat me to it.
I recently moved, and in the move I wanted to try to keep my DSL downtime as short as possible. The telephone was in my roommates name, while the ISP was in my name. This I figured would work in my favor. 2 weeks before my move, I called Qwest to get phone service in my new apartment. Everything on the surface seemed to go well - I even got my phone number of choice (or I thought). 3 days after the call I was supposed to have service, 5 days after the call, I called qwest about it. Apparently they assigned me a telphone number that was already in use - and then reassigned me another number without notifying me what the number is. I immediately asked to have my number changed to something else - which they allowed. It took 5 days due to a weekend and memorial day. No big deal. I moved in 4 days later. I called my ISP to have them submit a request for DSL on my line and due to the phone number mistakes they still were unable to do that today. Apparently Qwest does not give them the same access to the available numbers as they do thier own reps. I called Qwest not even an hour after I checked with my ISP, and the rep for Qwest was able to schedule my DSL to be provisioned by next Monday.
Point: I tryed to start the process early, and their mistakes made me be a week late.
I am afraid to see the bill, as I am sure they will have charged me for all of thier mistakes.
Slightly OT, I know, but I noticed this a coupla months ago.
When we got a call with an offer to join Comcast's Platinum Ultra-Cool MegaSuperGiant digital cable plan for $60 a month, we went for it. It was a pain, and even though we already had the digital cable box, it took 9 days to get it turned on. No call by a professional, nothing like that. Just flip the damned switch, right? I called several times and said, "Can't you just TURN IT ON?!" They said "We can't do that. It has to go through corporate, and THEY have to do it. We have no control over your service."
We were cutting costs at home to save some dough, and figured we'd shut off the now $90 a month cable - turn it back to just basic. So, I made the phone call one evening at about 9:30 while my wife and I were watching a show. I relayed my reasons to the lady, not enough time to watch it all, bad for the kids, blah blah, and she said, "Ok, sir, I can take care of *CLICK**FLASH* that. Anything else I can do for you?"
Excuse me? "What was...? Did you just turn off our cable?" "Yes, sir. I submitted the cancellation just a second ago. It shouldn't take too long."
WTF?!?! "You turned of my fucking cable with a tap of a key but it took me NINE GODDAMNED DAYS to get it turned ON?!?!"
"Well, uhhh, sir, uhhh, it's a much more complex process to get it turned on - it's got to be routed, programmed, and uhhhh..." So, I said, as calmly as possible, "Bullshit. Turn it off. All of it. Absolute bullshit." and I hung up loudly.
So, we're not getting charged for cable anymore.
But it's still turned on.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
First my own broadband horror story. When I first moved to Austin, I tried to get DSL through a non-baby-bell ISP. They said that the lines in my apartment building were insuffienct to provide service, as they were told that by SBC, the local Bell. Literally the next day, I got a call from SBC offering me DSL and stating that my line was qualified for it. I told them to stuff it and cancelled my phone line, too. I ordered a Cable modem from TimeWarner.
Then I bought a house and signed up for Sprint ION. Essentially a dry-line with data, VOIP, lots of speed and multiple phone lines. 3 weeks later Sprint pulled the plug on ION, mainly because it was so cumbersome to setup the service via local Bells, and it was probably underpriced at the time.
Next I tried to get DSL through Earthlink. They actually got the line setup within 30 days and sent me the equipment. They must have had a connection with SBC! Unfortunately, it never worked, despite many attempts and 3 different DSL modems.
Next, I tried SpeakEasy DSL. They found that SBC had published 3 differing distances for my house (which hasn't moved) to the LCO (which hasn't moved), 1500ft, 8000ft, and 15000ft. They also said regardless of the correct distance, they couldn't provide me service because SBC had a bridge-tap on my line. Basically, SBC was too cheap to use a copper pair for someone else's phone line and instead they multiplexed it into mine, killing any possibility of either party getting broadband.
I ended up getting a cable modem from Time Warner again.
Now, I live in Albuquerque. New town same story. No go on DSL in my apartment unless I get it through the local bell, Qwest, who won't let me run a server or anything else fun. I ended up with cable modem service through Comcast whose 100x faster than dial up service gets me around 200kb/s download and a paltry 30-40kb/s upload for a measley $40/month!
It's so completely frustrating!
The fundamental problem is that by deregulating, your change the priorities of the organization. As a government entity or regulated company, the #1 priority is reliable service for all. Take away the regulation and allow the company to be listed on public exchanges, and not the #1 priority is to satisfy the demands of shareholders...i.e. profit.
While most conservatives would say that reliability and profit can coexist, the reality is that reliability is possible for the most profitable customers or areas.
This is exemplified by small municipalities that struggled to get broadband service from the telecom conglomerates. They formed municipal entities to invest in the local infrastructure and built broadband networks. Most were able to provide quality service at an affordable price. Many were even able to provide high-quality service using FTTH (fiber to the home).
How did the telecom conglomerates respond, they sued the municipalities saying that a local service providers were anti-competitive?
The nationalization of infrastructure is nothing new. The nationalization of electricity, phone, and water utilities during the early 20th century enabled all Americans, not just those in profitable markets, to participate the industrial and commercial age.
The best way to ensure that all can participate in a Digital Age is by prioritizing fast, reliable broadband access for all. The de-regulated telecom conglomerates neither have done nor have a profitable business model to do this.
Some comments from Denmark...
In Denmark we used to have a large government owned Telecommunication Company, just like the one described above. When deregulations were made, also under the influence of the free market in EU, the Danish telecommunication was forced to lease the lines to its competitors.
In order to provide a fair deal, TDC (the Danish telecommunication company) was ordered to account for the expenses of the raw cobber. It then had to provide the same price for leasing the cobber to its competitors, as it was billing its own internal departments.
In theory it sounds easy, but in reality several of the competitors (Telia, the Swedish company, among others) started to complain about TDC. Most of the complains was about the time it took TDC to provide the information (regarding prices) or the time it took to lease a line from TDC.
Today the market has levelled out quite a bit. There still complaints about TDC, but the system slowly starts to work.
Two other competitors have entered the market in regards to backbone. The Danish railways (DSB) have a lot of fibre along all the railways. These fibres are now been used for a fair competition to TDC. The other major competition comes from wireless systems. Some of the mobile operators have started to enter this area. For companies (its still too expensive for us normal people) they also provide wireless lines the last mile to the company.
In regards to us mortals, another trend, mainly in the cities, have appeared. Some buildings or neighbourhoods have joined and made their own telenetwork. This includes both data and telephones. They then own their own central that can be connected to the central system in one of the above ways.
In regards to Data, the television cable operators are also starting to provide the service.
All this leads to a fair deal of competition forcing TDC to lose its monopoly for telecommunication.
I should note that Denmark is a small country and in terms of geography it can't be compared to Australia, but some of the mechanisms may be the same.
As a final comment, I lately had to purchase an ATM line for the company I worked in. The company operated in Scandinavia so I made contact to the 3 major tele companies in all tree countries (they were all the three original government companies). The speed and service still led me to one conclusion... they all suck. I thought that TDC was bad, but after I have dealt with the others I have experienced the same. I believe it's an issue all over the world. Old government companies have a very hard time to adjust from monopoly to be a service minded organisation...
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Unless the quality of service that Telstra provides has gone down hill a lot since I last lived in Oz (mid-1998), I would say that the customer service in the US is no better. There still is a lot of monopoly activity in the US anyway. Its just that, rather than being at a national level, it's at a regional level. And given the higher population in the US (about 15x), it means the monopolies here are probably not much bulkier than Telstra.
I have found a new
/. editors do an outstanding job of maintaining a signal-to-noise ratio that far surpasses the internet average, but I'm starting to get a little frustrated with the ridiculous way it pre-emptively rejects comments based on arbitrary formatting criteria. That job should be left to the moderators.
Way to express my outrage
And comfort my pain.
I have spent my break
Writing too many haiku
To give you insight.
The phone company
Stinking to highest heaven,
Fetid like garbage.
Envelope: opened.
What the hell is a PICC charge?!
My bill is too high.
I called them right then
To lodge a complaint, but I'm
On hold forever.
Quick resolution?
No way! I am getting the
Complete runaround.
Customer service?
Not a chance in this lifetime!
"Screw you, consumers!"
"Your griping is in vain!
We are a monopoly!
Mu hu ha ha ha!"
Those money-grubbers!
They own the damn F.C.C.!
Just try to complain.
Frustrated, beaten.
I pray for alternatives
To these lame assclowns.
Please, V.O.I.P.!
Release me from this bondage
With new services.
I am willing to
Pay through the nose for broadband
To screw those bastards!
I just hope it works-
The 'net is slow already
And loaded with ads.
Aw, crap, I'll just pay!
It's not like the ISPs
could do much better.
Besides, they are all
Owned by the telcos in one
Form or another.
========
For those of you who are wondering, the stupid lameness filter rejected this in standard Haiku form (three lines per verse) because the line length average of 13.5 characters was too short. I had to add these extra lines at the bottom to get it through the posting engine. Sorry about that - at least I didn't have to indicate line breaks with '/' characters.
Now, I certainly think the
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Things are absolutely terrible here in the US right now. It's hard to say if it's worse than before, because a) I was pretty young when deregulation started (about 12 years old), and 2) the customer service and phone service was terrible, but in a different way. You didn't own your phone and the costs for things like long distance were something like $1.00 a minute or more. (And those were 1984 dollars!) So now you can buy whatever damn phone you want and call anywhere in the US for $0.05/minute, but the phone company is billing you for services you didn't order, then playing games about removing the charges from your bills. It's really unbelievable that they're still in business, even with their monopoly. I've seriously considered only having a cell phone, but the phone company ties my wired phone to my DSL, and I can't yet get wireless internet. (And the terms of service on cable are not acceptable to my situation.) So I either go without internet, or I continue to use the local monopoly. Fun!
I've got an cable internet connection and my isp is a bastard.
//**access-list deny udp any any range 7000 7006*//-My ISP removed upd ports 6000-8000 from the blocked list after my request.
==
For the past 1 month I have been trying to play Counter Strike on my cable internet connection. I can filter and update the servers. But I cannot log onto any game servers.
When I try to connect to a game server, it tries to connect 4 times, and then disconnnects. This problem is with all servers in the range 27*** port.
Now, I tried Counter Strike on my dialup connection(56k). It works just fine. Its connects to any game server I want and gives no problems.
I told them(my ISP) that if can play with a dialup without any problems, I should be able to play on my cable internet connection too but they haven't been able to solve the problem.
I checked with my ISP and they are not blocking any ports in the 27*** range.
I removed my modem and uninstalled the modem software. I disabled the dialup modem in all profiles. It is still not working.
Below are the ports my ISP is blocking-
ip access-list extended kaza
deny tcp any any eq 6699 time-range no-kaza
deny tcp any eq 6699 any time-range no-kaza
deny tcp any eq 1214 any time-range no-kaza
deny tcp any any eq 1214 time-range no-kaza
deny tcp any eq 4662 any time-range no-kaza
deny tcp any any eq 4662 time-range no-kaza
permit ip any any
access-list permit any
access-list deny udp any eq 1434 any
access-list deny udp any eq netbios-ns any
access-list deny tcp any eq 445 any
access-list permit ip any any
access-list deny ip 192.168.0.0 0.0.255.255 any
access-list deny ip 172.16.0.0 0.15.255.255 any
access-list deny ip 10.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 any
access-list deny udp any any eq netbios-ns
access-list permit ip 203.192.0.0 0.0.255.255 any
access-list permit ip any any
access-list deny ip 192.168.0.0 0.0.255.255 any
access-list deny ip 172.16.0.0 0.15.255.255 any
access-list deny ip 10.0.0.0 0.255.255.255 any
access-list deny udp any any range 7008 7069
access-list deny udp any any range 7071 7647
access-list deny udp any any range 7650 7777
access-list deny udp any any range 7779 7999
access-list deny udp any eq 1434 any
access-list permit ip any any
Could you please help me out?
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please visit: http://www.yukon.netfirms.com/feedback.htm to reply.
Thanks.
I ordered DLS service from speakeasy.com (this was about a year and a half ago. Well they couldn't set up becouse qwest would not connect them so I then ordered DSL service directly from Qwest and suprise suprise I got service a week later.
... we have Telecom. Every bit as bad as I've submitted to /. in the past.
/. posts because believe me, I've posted on Telecom before/
Here we get a monthly bill based on number of hours usage. No IP's that we used (or that used us) or anything. a simple time counter. Last two bills I paid were each bigger than my mortgage.
If my kid manages to install Kazaa (would I? Never!) my bill goes through the roof.
Guess NZ isn't big enough for
I had my local phone company wire my line on fiber, which my preferred ISP (note : not the local telco) cannot support.
This is despite the fact that when my line was ordered, I ordered an all-copper, date grade line. And that order was approved.
TWO MONTHS LATER, I finally convinced them to roll a technician by calling in a complaint of noise on the line.
Technician called me at work, said they couldn't find anything wrong, and what's the problem. I told them I wanted all copper for DSL service. Technician replied "Give me ten mintues". And that's all it took.
The moral? A lot of the people in the trenches know their stuff, and know what's going on. It's the beaurocrats and managers that are screwing everything up.
- JD
Currently Telstra do not measure the signal loss on the line. They extrapolate signal loss by using the length of cable runs and the number of joins. Thus the comment about humidity impacting on their projected measurement is bogus.
Telstra does not currently allow for the testing of signal loss on a line either internally or via an independant body, even when this cost is met by the person requesting the testing. Some of the technicians doing the signal loss projection fail to understand the difference between a projected loss and actual loss.
Telsta currently budget for an estimated signal loss of of 48db over the length of the cable run. Their testing software currently projects this to be about 3.5km in most cases. Even though telstra may refuse the provisioning of a service their process and justification for doing so remains opaque.
They don't allow the connection of the service even when the customer accepts the risks of a poor QOS.
Problems with Telstras ADSL process should be reasonably easy to fix and a process such as allowing customer to fund the physical testing of the line would relieve customer angst and provide a greater access to customers with known acceptable connections.
Come on Telstra, lift your game. (if any of the above is incorrect I would love to be corrected)
I originally wanted to sign up with a smaller isp over here, because they were cool guys, and I liked the way they approached the service (quite geeky)...they did the line test and were told that the line quality was unacceptable. So they told me that they couldn't offer the service...I called telstra to double check everything...at which time the sales representative said "I'm sure we can work something out, now, how about we just sign you up for telstra service blah blah"...I told her I just wanted the details of the line test, and a retest so I could be sure, and she told me they would be happy to do that, but I had to sign up (make a commitment to them first), and that, from initial information, it shouldn't be a problem (getting adsl). At which time I got on my high horse and decided that I would rather stick with 56k than participate in what was obviously a scam (and let a sales person corner me into a contract)...anyway, just thought I'd share...telsta has a history of this kind of activity on both standard and net based products...but an inquiry would hurt the governments privatization plans...hence, nothing ever happens
Babelfish doesn't seem to support nigger.
Sadly I have no links to provide and no idea how far this idea/project has actually gotten. If they acheive it I'm sure it will be nothing but good news for the high tech industry in this state.
In .au we don't see those kinda speeds without selling off first-born children.
So a standard ADSL service (8/1) over the Telstra copper will only really be good for up to 3.5kms. As you break that distance, the transmission speeds falls off drastically.
Because he was subscribed with a 256K or maybe a 512K service, the transmission speed is adequate. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they can't push it out to 10kms! But they can't do 8/1 at that range.
OK, no problem... "nobody would ever need more than 640K of RAM". The reason they won't do it is that when the Next Big Thing comes along, they'll want to use up that extra bandwidth.
You don't want to trap yourself now for the future. You'll end up with a "new enhancement" for all ADSL subscribers that only 50% of them can use - the other 50% think "class action".
I've heard the same story from a lot of ISPs in Illinois: Ameritech (now SBC) owns the copper here in most DSL areas, and often refuses to install DSL for third-party ISPs/CLECs, saying that the site is too far away, even when it's well within range. They refuse to install even if the ISP and end customer both want to try it anyway. On top of that, whether they reject the line or not, SBC's salesmen seem to "coincidentally" call the (ISP's!) customer directly to sell SBC Yahoo DSL within a couple of days of the DSL order, and somehow the customer usually is close enough for that, even when SBC is simultaneously refusing to handle the same signal from the other ISP.
If you order DSL, then get a call from SBC about switching to SBC Yahoo DSL right afterwards, call your state commerce commission. They need to know how often this "coincidence" is happening.
This sounds *exactly* like telecom italia's weekly show! Absolutely the same script, except we've got one story like this one above published every single day.
Just to let you know, turn over for tech support & customer service varies from 1 month to 1 year depending on the company... I in fact worked for one & benefits kicked in after 3 months, hence their turnover was at almost exactly 3 months... Hence saving the company from keeping non-management employees who had to be paid benefits to a minimum... If they liked you though you'd be a 'manager' in the same space of time... They didn't like me (because I was all about helping solve issues not about their 'tangible goals') so I got the boot real quick when my 3 months came up...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
You're missing the point. Telstra's conduct is technically illegal under the Trade Practices' Act.
(emphasis is mine)
Here, Telstra have falsely claimed that the standard of service that could be provided was of a lower standard than was actually possible, and thus are in technical breach of the law. Whether they are actually complying with their own arbitrary rules is irrelevant.
The rules that they have are probably designed so that they don't falsely claim a higher level of service than is possible. It's been demonstrated in this case that, in spite of their guidelines to the contrary, good service is indeed possible. For them to claim that a good quality service is *not* possible is where the problem lies, and where they are in the poo legally.
Disclaimer; IANAL.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I would say that the results in HK from a consumer perspective have been far more positive. Our prices for 3M ADSL as the incumbent telecom provider are around US$20/M due to competition; competitors are down around $12.
One reason for this is that Hong Kong is an easy place to provide DSL -- the city is so dense that nearly everyone is near an exchange.
I suspect the real reason, though, is that we have more serious regulators than in the U.S. or Australia. There is no doubt that the goal of OFTA is to introduce competition and reduce the market share of incumbents. When I was in the U.S. in recent years it seemed that theoretical competition was enough to satisfy regulators; they were remarkably unconcerned with the fact that providers other than the incumbents found it almost impossible to stay in business.
Hmm, I've heard this I-can-see-game-servers-but-can't-log-on scenario before.
:(
;)).
:)
I think the most likely cause of this is either:
a) That your ISP is actually blocking these ports (possibly because they inadvertently because have a crappy firewall than mangles packets, which sadly happens quite a bit as a lot of 'standard industry equipment', like Check Point Firewall, is in fact utterly annoying and less powerful than ipchains (let alone iptables, or ipfw for that matter)).
or:
b) That you have an a non routable private IP for your home connection. 99% of dialup's have a real, internet routable IP, as do 99% of all DSL connections.
However, many (if not most) *cable* internet connections use private, non-routable IP's (in the range 10.X.X.X, 192.168.X.X or 172.16.X.X). This is generally because it makes life easier for them, unfortunately if you need to use a service which *requires* a dedicated IP because of the limitations of the protocol (like say, video conferencing, or online gaming) then you are out of luck.
I assume this is the case (if you check your network adapter, see if you have a 10.X.X.X, 192.168.X.X or 172.16.X.X address). If you do I don't think you will be able to play counter strike at all with your current ISP (unless they set-up a Counter Strike server on the same network, e.g. with a 10.X.X.X address and a real internet address (so external networks could also connect, giving you someone to play against
I could be wrong about (b) in this case, because I don't know if CS requires these ports (I know the server does, but I don't know about the client). Someone who knows more about CS would be able to tell you for sure
HTH!
(If you'd like some more help, if you could post the name of your cable provider, that would help a lot.)
After reading the post, the article and some of the discussion here (>3) I see that it concentrates on bad sides of deregulation.
Situation in Australia is similar to that in Europe, where in most countries telecoms were state owned and then recently privatized, but not split. As a result they are huge organizations that dominate their respective markets and keep the prices up. Situation in Eastern Europe is especially funny - for example calling US from some of those countries costs twice as much as calling them from the US. Everybody in Europe looks at the US' privatized telecommunications market with envy (stories about telephones being installed overnight etc.).
However, most comments in the discussion here are from people in the US that don't like results of their own deregulation and long for more government control.
If both regulation and deregulation are bad then what is the way out of this mess? Or maybe we are missing some points?
Maybe for example telco companies are quite good at what is their traditional, core business (basic voice services - not many complain about those in the US) but can't cope with completely different business of being Internet providers? I think the way net operates (on social level) and needs of net users are something not easily understood by someone with telco mindset. However, they try.
My ISP uses a Cisco router and the OS of that router is something starting with I**.
.
I am not that conversant with routers/firewalls and such.
"is in fact utterly annoying and less powerful than ipchains (let alone iptables, or ipfw for that matter)).
" -- I didn't get what you meant there. Sorry.
"That you have an a non routable private IP for your home connection".
I don't understand that part too.
I do have a permanent ip -something like 203.192.xxx.xxx
When you mean 10.x.x.x , 192.168.x.x or 172.16.x.x, you mean literally or figuratively?
Also, I should mention that when I try to play CS that are on lower ports(eg- 81.3.3.141 port- 1337) then I am able to play without any problems(with my cable internet connection). Even port 21 works fine. But the problem is that in Counter Strike, 98 % of the game servers are in the 27*** port range. And this is frustrating.
My ISP is www.in2cable.com - This ISP is a cable internet exclusive provider.
If you need more information, I'll link to my journal or website - http://slashdot.org/~abhisarda/journal/35371
www.yukon.netfirms.com/feedback.htm.
Thanks.
Allow me to add example 3:
I had a landline account with Verizon about three years ago. I used it for dialup internet. I dialed each access point to see which were local. In the suburbs, if something was local you only needed to dial the seven digits. If it involved an additional charge, you need to dial one and the area code.
Apparently, it was different closer to the city. You could dial just the seven digits and be billed for a "non-local" call. I got a bill for several hundred dollars.
Upon calling customer service, they said it was too bad and that I would have to pay the whole thing. After a bit of complaining, they decided to cut it in half. I said that was still not acceptable. I never paid. I got a cell phone as my only phone and cable internet from AT&T. I ignored the collection notices from Verizon. Eventually, I moved out.
I wonder if they're still trying to collect on that account. One thing's for sure, I'm never using Verizon again.