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When Telecom Mergers Hit Home
netbuzz writes "A telecom manager submitted an essay to Network World that paints a sadly humorous picture of what the mega-telecom mergers really mean on the ground." From the article: "Well, when I heard that these companies were about to combine forces, it made my blood run cold. How would they be able to take, in each case, two companies with already broken processes and mediocre customer support and successfully merge them? How could they continue to provide me with the support I need to keep my company's networks functioning as they need to in this age of the bandwidth junkie? The answer ... at this moment, is they can't!"
But seriously, did anyone really expect that consumers wouldn't be harmed by all the telecom mergers? Monopolies are always bad for consumers, which is why they are so heavily regulated. Since there can be no practical competition to a land line phone provider, the only choices that aren't inherently harmful to consumers are A. highly regulated monopoly, B. government-run monopoly, C. a non-profit cooperative.
Stop with this foolish deregulation before it's too late....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The answer is obvious, they'll outsource the customer support
I'm in exactly this kind of situation right now. I'm trying to set up a new DS3 for dialup Internet customers (lol, I know, but there are still a lot of 'em and they pay my salary), and get some numbers ported, and it's a nightmare. Our SBC sales rep of almost ten years isn't allowed to place orders, our new AT&T salesman is a nincompoop, and these processes that would have been trivial this time last year are turning into a trainwreck.
About the cognitive awareness which exists between the leftmost and rightmost appendage of an organism and the unique level to which it doesn't always exist.
This merger frenzy is now creating corporate organisms with an exponentially larger number of hands.
What do we expect?
Maybe Fox can do a special about it and call it "when corporate bureaucracies attack!"
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
The great thing about merging two incompetent companies is they usually collapse faster and make room for someone who can do what the customer wants.
We don't care.
We don't have to.
We're the Phone Company.
Now all we need is Lilly Tomlin to take those orders and we're all set!
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
Mergers usually happen before everyone knows all the facts. Rather than being good for the customers and saying, "Do stuff as usual until we come up with new rules.." its "Don't do anything until we come up with new rules.."
This is obviously retarded. They end up losing a lot of money during the merger because of this. Another problem is that a lot of companies will say something like, "Ok. Now that you're a part of us, go make us some money. Bitch." Never mind that they pretty much just cut the throat of the company, leaving it with very little ability (or authority!) to do anything.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
This is terrible, but you have to blame your local village AND your state for the pro-union regulations they've created, requirements that can not and will not change as the market needs them to.
In many states (my state is Illinois), there are so many pro-labor requirements that are managed by labor management, not by technicians, that I am surprised that most people still get ANY service.
If you can't call a third party to provide you service, why is that? It is because third parties are criminals if they run their own circuits -- criminals!
Telecomm customer service and response has NEVER been good, so why call it into question in light of recent mergers?
Both of the issues exemplified in the article were new issues arising from the fact that because of the merger the new company could no longer provide services they once did. Since there is no competition due to the merger, I'd say it is reasonable to call into question how much the merger has crippled the ability of businesses to acquire and use these services. This is concrete harm to the consumer and the economy. It is always worthwhile to question the decisions made by the government to see if they are doing their job. It seems in this case they are not.
They claim competition on one end and then degrade VoIP traffic intionally on the other.
The parent post really does give good advice. My provider (Speakeasy), for instance, uses its private network for all its VoIP and has decent QoS. So no, SBC can't degrade my VoIP traffic. Are they as cheap as SBC or Verizon? No, they're actually a fair bit more expensive. But that is how I choose to vote with my dollar. And when I left SBC I let them know exactly why I was leaving. Poor customer service, one arm of the company not knowing what the other arm was doing, etc. I've never, ever had any customer service issues with my current provider. It's definitely possible to find a provider that doesn't rely on SBC or Verizon, povided you live in a fairly major urban area.
Having a T1 moved Post SBC purchase.
From the 4th floor to the 3rd floor.
Took 36 days and 8 people to move 1 T1 Line 1 floor.
It's fucking ridiculous.
I would hate to see what would happen after the bellsouth acquisition.
The article makes it clear that the telcos are refusing to take orders from paying customers.
If Janet Ley had a real alternative to Verizon and ATT, don't you think she'd be taking it?
If a company has real competition, what happens when it blows off its customers? It goes out of business. Are the incumbent telephone companies out of business?
Why all the fuss about the telecom mergers/aqusitions? It is the nature of a free market that some companies will win and others lose.
What exactly do you think the merger of two government enforced monopolies into a larger government enforced monopoly has to do with a "free market?" The free market is not operating on phone companies. AT&T was not taken down by the free market, they were split up by the government for breaking the law and because the situation was so bad everyone had to rent their telephone as well as pay high rates for crappy service.
And the "rint" in Sprint is a play on the word "rant", which is what I do what I call Sprint customer service.
They hate that. But it gets results.
Especially when you say "This call is being recorded for quality control purposes".
...to get more people to pay for a three-way calling service.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.