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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.
"
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 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.
Imagine how things would have been with the old state monopoly still in place.
I remember the days when Holland had a state monopoly telco. We weren't allowed to hook up our own phones, we had to rent them from the PTT. They had a choice of about 6 phones. Making a new extension in your home? Nono, you have to get the PTT guy to do it. Voicemail, call waiting, toll-free numbers? Forget it! Top that with outrageous rates for international calling. Oh, and it wasn't that the technology for some of these goodies did not yet exist: other countries had them. PTT was in no great hurry to introduce them. Why would they be?
The first step in deregulation came when they allowed people to modify their own wiring and to hook up any (approved) piece of equipment. For the first time a wireless phone could be had. Finally, a 4-line home exchange could be had for $200 instead of $800.
Then they deregulated further and other phone companies appeared on the scene, offering carrier (pre-)select. International rates now are a fraction of what they used to be. The PTT finally introduced voicemail and other modern tools that people got used to on the mobile phones.
No, I think deregulation has brought us consumers a lot of good things. And soon, for the first time in history I will be able to subscribe to a telephone service through my ISP (using ADSL and VoIP), bypassing PTT (now KPN) completely. My gain? About half the monthly charges and lower rates to about every destination.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
Selling off stuff is one thing, selling off public assets, like public land or (especially) monopoly rights is altogether different.
"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, America is converting from a Democracy to a Capitalistic state. The difference between the two is in a Democracy the government is of, by, and for the people. In a Capitalistic state the government is out to make as much money as it can, however it can. Even if it has to trample over all of your rights.
Where did you come up with this? Capitalism and democracy are not mutually exclusive ideologies, nor are they even related. Capitalism has nothing to do with the "government out to make as much money as it can". It is quite the opposite -- the government gets out of the way and allows the people to make as much money as they can.
Second, in an international economy (the One World economy bs) you do not matter at all so long as everything is evenly divided up among all of the countries around the world. Thus, it is no longer what is good for America is good enough for the world - it becomes what country X says is what everyone has to do. Look at Iraq to see what happens when you don't do what you are told.
This is unintelligible babbling. Iraq's violation of 17 UN security counsel resolutions banning weapons of mass destruction has nothing to do with the international economy. And since when have all countries around the world evenly divided up anything??
We in America are also moving towards a police state. If you don't believe me just look at the Patriot Act.
Typical Slashdot rhetoric about the Patriot act. Name one significant, noticeable right that you have been denied from as a direct result of the Patriot Act. You might want to pick up a history book and see what it really is like to live in a "police state". Now, I'm all for limiting the rights of the Government, but I'm also for limiting a crazy mans ability to hijack a plan and fly it into a heavily populated building.
Here in my own state (the president's home state) all of the democratic reps left the state because of what the republicans were doing.
What the Republicans were doing was a completely legal and appropriate redistricting plan, something that the Democrats did a few years back when they had control of the state legislature.
Justice is blind but Americans are bound hand and foot by arbitrary laws put in place by companies, corporations, and international interests so they can profit and we, the people, can lose. Before the multi-billion dollar corporations were around things were sane, balanced, and easy to understand. Now they are not.
Things have never been "sane, balanced, and easy to understand". Are you kidding me? Life will always be challenging regardless of how many multi-billion dollar companies there are. Cain didn't kill Abel because he was interested in his stock in a billion dollar company.
Sleep if you will, but the time for sleep is past. Hide if you will, but you will be found. Aren't you done with being afraid?
What is your solution? Don't you get tired of complaining all the time? You just wrote several paragraphs complaining about everything you don't like, but didn't offer a single suggestion or alternative. What do you suggest? Do you want to make it illegal for companies to make money? That would work really well. Do you want everybody with money to have to give it to the poor? Hmmm. That sounds like an incentive to succeed. What do you suggest?
It is far too easy to sit back and point out everything you think is wrong. It takes real intelligence and leadership to actually do something about it.
But , don't you remember?
They sold off telstra not "for the children!" , but "for the environment!"
So they got a few billion dollars for half of Telstra. Great. What happens in ten years time when than money's gone? Why, sell the other half! And then? Ooops, no more assets to sell. Telstra pretty much was the last major valuable asset the Australian Gov't had.
Once they sell them, there's no buying them back. Soon after they'll say "No, you can't have a phone in outer BumFuck, it's too far away from any regional centres of note and it's just not *cost effective* for us. Sorry. Here, try a HF radiotelephone instead."
As far as I'm concerned, certain things should be government owned simply because they provide a service to the people that is too important to worry about the cost, which is what private companies do.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.