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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.
"
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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)
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.")
If the competition had been a little more even from the beginning, maybe the service would be better now. I have Verizon myself and the customer service is pretty awful. I think customer service is kind of a lost art in any field though. Good customer service is not compatible with the short term cost cutting that people who buy and sell stocks like to see. The longer people in customer service positions work with a given company the more helpful they will be, as they learn the systems, and who to get a hold of. Unfortunately, the longer they work at the company the more they get paid, which makes them an attractive target for cost cutting. I would be pretty surprised if the average length of employment of a CSR (customer service representative) who actually answers the phones at a major company is more then 2 or 3 years. At that length of employment they are probably just about trained.
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.
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?
I had the opposite experience. I called Covad and they told me my nearest exchange was 50 miles away.
The funny thing is I live in Los Angeles, 50 miles in any direction would take me completely out of of the city.
I called them and tried to let them know of their mistake and they refused to listen. I gave them the location of the exchange (about 1.5 miles away) they said the distance didn't matter, it was the length of the wire between them and my house. I agreed and stated that if the exchange was 1.5 miles away, how exactly did they run the phone lines to my house? Did they spiral them in? They had no answer for that, but said they and their computer don't make mistakes and it was impossible to get ADSL service.
I called up Verizon later that afternoon, they verified that I was about 1.5 miles away and qualified me for every level of service.
I explained my dealings with Covad, and the rep at Verizon laughed and told me Covad colocates their equipment in the same building. They also laughed at the 50 mile distance and told me if that was the case, they would be suprised if my phone worked at all.
That's a crapload of customers being passed over and handed to the regional Bells because of stupidity on the part of Covad. Because of that, I have little sympathy for them.
As for customer service, I leave them alone (I run my own mail and web servers) and they leave me alone (I have a business DSL account, so servers are allowed). An excellent arrangement for the two of us. All they provide is a reliable pipe to send/receive data.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
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
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.
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).
It's true, there is no company I hate with such ferocity and venom (ignoring microsoft) as Verizon. I have never had such rude, apathetic, outright incompentant customer service as with verizon. You'd think they felt as if they really didn't have to WORK to get you as a customer. Uh wait...they don't! It takes 3 weeks to get a phone installed, and don't you dare try and do it within hailing distance of any minor holiday.
Then because I was so furious about the shitty DSL service they provide, I switched to speakeasy. Speakeasy is probably the BEST isp I've ever had the pleasure of doing business with. However, Verizon STILL managed to block my install for 3 weeks while they "finalized my account", which apparently prohibits them from reconfiguring the virtual circuit to connect to speakeasy. Keep in mind this has nothing to do with PAYMENT which was done by credit card. This has to do with taking 3 weeks from getting my "disconnect" order to sending it through accounting to reverify I was "paid up" on my service, to sending someone out to my location (according to them!) to "disconnect my line" (same line as voice, and since I build this equipment for a living, I KNOW it's done in the CO at a computer terminal, I even know the command to do it, and the command but not the parameter to connect the VC to speakeasy).
At first I thought it was Covad screwing up, but then they started forwarding me the trouble tickets, complete with phone numbers of Verizon agents. I began calling those agents myself just to make sure. Sure enough, it was all Verizon's game. I suspect that Verizon deliberately screws up CLECs to make them appear as incompetant as Verizon is, but I can't ever prove it.
There are many good solutions to the problem, but it all involves dismantling RBOCs in some way. They have too much money to let this happen.
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
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.
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.
Indeed--here in California, customer service with AT&T and Pacific Bell used to a joke. It has gotten better recently, probably because the government no longer guarantees a monopoly to the local phone company. The customer service is actually reasonable (where I live), and I don't get billed for things I never ordered.
Believe it or not, I've also run into people who long for the "good ol' days" when AT&T would force you to buy *their* telephones, b/c they feel that all this freedom of choice stuff is just too much of a headache. And they told me that IQs in America have been increasing over the last century...
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