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AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers
Proudrooster writes "In the past two weeks AT&T has sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service will be suspended in 30 days and permanently disconnected in 60 days. They cited E911 service as the reason. (It is peculiar that AT&T is unable overcome an E911 technical hurdle, since SBC/AT&T is also the local landline company in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.) Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to set up a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those who are unable to transfer their old numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers: 'We are turning off your phone in 30 days, goodbye.'"
but I cannot find instances of any rude mails. Looks like somebody has tried to make it more sensational in the summary.
Oh, if only it were fiction...
s /peoria_cut_cable_causes_affects_phones_throughout _the_state/
http://www.pjstar.com/php/index.php?/news/comment
Over the past 10 years, I've had utterly horrible service with anything with the AT&T letters in it. Cable, cell and long distance. I spent 2 months fighting with their cable people over service problems, had horrible customer service in 2 years of AT&T wireless and, the kicker, had the joy of learning in the midst of a family crisis while out of the country that they cancelled my calling card mysteriously and then had the gall to claim that I NEVER HAD ONE! Even though I was (and still am right now) looking at the card they sent me in 1999. So, if I'm surprised it's that they even bothered to tell people they were doing this. I would've expected them to cut service off with no warning and continue to bill people and refuse to stop billing or to refund for charges rendered after service was cut off. Or, maybe that's coming?
I totally agree. It stinks for the customers, but they should be upset about E911, not about AT&T. As though people just aren't smart enough to realize the difference between VoIP and the phone lines, a bunch of dumbasses add regulations that make the whole thing that much less worthwhile.
See also: Smart cars are too unsafe for Americans to choose to drive, Marijuana is a deadly addictive drug, etc. Somebody change my diaper.
The Phone Company DOES care. You damn right they care. They like to get paid.
I refuse to wait on hold. Any phone company that offers an answering service for its customers certainly should be able to set one up where its customers can leave a message for them.
My answering service for instance has not been working since last November. I actually think they shut it off deliberately because when I didn't like the over billing I contacted Investor Relations and their legal department. Seems the phone company cares about its Investors. Seems this is a direct line into the corporate management. Go figure eh?
Note: The legal department has to deal with legal issues. If you want something done then write a letter or fax the legal department and threaten them. They are smart and they are high priced help. The Legal Department does not want to deal with this shit either.
Well - seems the COMPANY PRESIDENT phoned me. Seems he didn't like me suggesting that after my bill has been PAID IN FULL BEFORE THE DUE DATE that its not ok for them to restrict my line and seems they also don't like me changing the amount owing and paying what I owe and telling them it is THEIR job to straighten their accounting out not mine and I'm not willing to wait on hold while they do it
Seems they think it is My responsibility to take up with the bank the time it takes for the bank to transfer the money into their accounts. This is despite the fact that they admitted the money was in their account at the time they restricted the service and they simply didn't check. The bank was excellent. Note when the line is restricted someone will answer the phone. This person noted the bill had been paid in full. They left the line restricted for about 4 days. They restricted it the day the bill was due. I paid in advance.
My Position: THE BANK IS YOUR AGENT, NOT MINE. You pay the bank for this service. Not me. If YOU have an issue with the bank then YOU take it up with the bank. Not Me! I told the guy to walk down the hall and ask his legal department.
Next day the bill was corrected. Same day my answering service quit.
Ok. I have quit paying their bill. When their accounting people call me I tell them: YUP. THE BILL IS NOT PAID! If you want it paid, get my answering service running and the bill will be paid in full within 1/2 hour. NO! I AM NOT WILLING TO WAIT ON HOLD. If YOU need someone to wait on hold while YOU do YOUR JOB then get YOUR COMPANY to hire someone to do it. I'm not willing to!
Its at a stalemate. Its been there for 2 months. There are letters in the mail. These are legal threats. If they restrict my service I WILL file in court and I will serve them and I will ask for a court order to force them to reconnect the service. They will lose. They do not have a leg to stand on.
See. The phone company does care? They care about their money. Rather than complain. Refuse to pay the bill until they deal with what they need to deal with. Its really simple actually!
I highly recommend the reading of the "Rape of Ma Bell" written by two ex-AT&T engineers who were around during the halcyon days of Ma Bell. You can download it for free at: http://www.porticus.org/bell/rapeofmabell.htm It is an extremely thorough book that makes a good point that perhaps the breakup of Ma Bell could have possibly been the worst thing ever done "for the greater good." In short AT&T was punished for being too successful. Instead of creating an environment that was condusive to competition via minor regulation, the FCC busted up a very efficient organization in the attempt a competitive environment for the consumer, but really was just punishing AT&T for being too good at what it did. An argument could be made, "Hey if they did not break up the phone company, then we would still be paying through the nose for long distance and still renting phones!" Well, who's to say that competition would not have come along anyway, especially if "everyone" was so pist off with the old curmudgeon that AT&T was always portrayed as.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
I spent a good deal of my professional life in the telco arena before I opted to regain my sanity - both on the 911 side of the street and on the telco (in some cases both).
911 isn't rocket science, but a lot of the "integration" points are much more manual than you might think. 911 is as serious as it gets - mistakes can cost lives. Many of the smaller players have just a single guy or a couple of guys that are tasked with ensuring that 911 gets their information and validating that they processed the information correctly. A history of mistakes on either side of the street would certainly mean that the relationship can no longer continue until things get worked out - and that means either the technical people start working together in a more friendly manner or that those people get replaced. Either way, that process can be time intensive as there are not a lot of people out there who have experience with the data models, the technology, and the business models.
There is no way that this wasn't a looming problem that was discussed over and over in meetings, but knowing the telco environment it isn't unreasonable to assume that even though the problem was urgent it was not properly addressed. I've been in software design meetings where the subject of whether to use the phrase "Work In Progress", "In Progress", or "Working" took the better part of three days simply because strong personalities were involved that wouldn't let it go (and in the end executive involvement was necessary to move forward).
This isn't a conspiracy to push people back to land lines. It's a case of management incompetence. A conspiracy would require a spirit of cooperation, and that simply does not exist at the management level or at the executive level within the telco vertical.
Is it me or is quite obvious that they are not making large amounts of money with VOIP. It' a distuptive technology. It is challenging what were high profit revenue models. Therefore they are not making as much money. Therefore they dont like it.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
They know your IP. If it is a DSL they can check it all the way to your local tail and have the same level of reliably identifying an emergency caller as for a normal phone call. All of this is in systems somewhere on the way. In addition to that it has to be checked only once - when the phone signs onto the system for service so the resource used is not that great. Same for cable - the MAC of your cable modem and the "location" of your MAC behind it can be polled straight away from the CMTS.
In either case we are talking 400-500 lines of code which does not need to function in real time in the call loop. All you need is to assign a phone to a call routing class to the correct emergency center some time after it has signed in and update the directory which supplies address data to the emergency services. This is done for the normal phones already anyway. If the main directory is static, VOIP and "follow me home" services can be passed to a secondary for referral. If there is a legal requirement for the phone to have emergency services from the moment of sign in, simply deny outgoing calls until registration is complete (first 5-10 minutes phone comes in on a new IP address). Plenty of ways to do all this. All are utterly technically trivial.
The only reason for this is a marketing/legal step somewhere. Most likely some ATT is taking the aim at Skype or Vonage. Clearly this, has nothing to do with technical impossibility of emergency services. Everything else aside, I cannot believe that ATT does not have a single person which can write this. All it takes are a couple of man weeks for a good OSS engineer. No rocket science in it.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
VoIP is going to be a VERY interesting space to watch over the next few years. With an old PC, I wired two small companies with PBX's, and connect them with multi-line capability through Sipphone.com for $0.01/minute, and no monthy fee or setup charge (sorry to sound like an add... here's another equivalent service: Vitelety.com). Further, in less than a year, you wont even need an old PC. Check out http://www.rowetel.com/ucasterisk/ip04. David Rowe is giving the world Asterisk capable hardware designs for free! My own feeling is that these things can be used as a bridge between the old analog days and the future (VoIP). A similar piece of hardware could act as an answering machine, and also determine if the number your calling even needs to route through for-fee services (using http://e164.org/). If the other end is listed in the free directory, your call will be FREE (in both senses - beer and speech). Look to AT&T to launch a major public smear campaign, push more insane laws, try to kill net neutrality (to kill VoIP), and file law-suits galore against VoIP providers. One downside... I'm not sure if I like the idea of Mom being able to call for free :-)
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
The answer is simple.
They want to charge you the higher rates for a land line and long distance service.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
BTW... one reason Congress goes along with such nonsense is that they love being able to wire-tap your call. Even Skype provides them that capability. With users calling each other directly over the net with NO third party in the middle, it will be far harder to wire-tap. Any call could be encrypted as easily as any ssh session.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
With systems like Asterix, the very core of the telecommunications business is threatened.
For DECADES they supported a huge beauracracy through usary long distance rates. A telephone switch is really a computer. As the prices of computers and electonics went down, very little was returned to the customer by way of cost savings. One might note that the present generation of the telecommunications industry has inherited a substantial infrastructure from our grandparents. In many respects and especially when it comes to the "last mile", the industry has not upgraded from what was built prior to the 1960's.
Next, advances in technology have increased the available bandwidth by orders of magnitude.
This puts the telephone company in the position where they bill on T1 or E1 service for instance in the vicinity of $1000 per month for the same bandwidth that they wish to bill $29 bux a month for by way of data services. The problem is further complicated by the fact that for an individual subscriber they want o bill for the voice bits PLUS the data bits. We all know the data bits can carry the voice as well.
The problem is that its all data. The switches and the routers see voice and data the same way. This is not true of antiquated systems used in some 3rd world areas, but it has been true of the 1st world telecommunications industry and especially North America for at least 30 years.
So, how do they justify billing one bloke over $1000 bux and billing the next bloke $29 bux for the same damn thing? How? By trying to keep the underlying technology mysterious. By hiding this from the general public. By dirty tactics like delaying certain packet types. By being deceitful.
The thing is that once _anyone_ has a broadband connection in place, the POTS voice dial up side uses so little bandwidth that it can easily be run over the digital link. The issue is time delays and here is where there are some problems.
The data on the telecommuncations system is multiplexed and thus a byte of data placed into a switch will show up at its destination within a known number of milliseconds. This is not true of the IP traffic.
What one could do if one had control over the "whole system" is set it up so that part of the bandwidth would be filled with time sensitive traffic and the remainder would be filled with IP traffic. This is basically how ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) works now. I won't bore anyone with details.
By doing this we can guarantee that a byte dropped into the channel will arrive within "x" milliseconds. Probably the IP traffic which takes the back seat will also arrive within "x" milliseconds as well. Voice over IP takes advantage of this.
Voice traffic is digitized at 64kB/sec = 8192 bytes per second with switching and signalling stollen from the bit stream. This is where 56kb comes from. Instead of multiplexing the voice bytes, we can instead gather up a bunch of the bytes and drop them in a packet and hope they arrive in time. If we gathered up say about 8000 bytes then we would have 1 second of voice. If instead we gather up say 80 then we have 1/100th of a second of voice. A UDP packet with say 80 bytes or 1/100th of a second of voice will probably arrive in time.
We can also do some cleaver things. We can put some imperceptible delays into the bit stream and create a little buffering - a few milliseconds worth - and gain tolerance of the bunchyness we get in the byte stream of VOIP. As most people know. Its pretty good.
But it leaves the telecommunications industry in a dilemma because they offered a reliable time guaranteed transmission mechanism for voice data via the ATM transmission method and now we don't want to use it because its priced too high. Too high here means higher than what they could sell the surplus bandwidth of their networks for. So in effect by offering IP traffic at $29 per month they cut their own throats and what saves their bacon for now is that most people don't understand how
Don't you mean: as easily as any EMAIL? Seems more appropriate, IMHO.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Probably a precursor to AT&T blocking all VOIP traffic on their lines. Hmmmm, anti-trust.
Economics of Net Neutrality
>>Everyone can look forward to more crap and less service as the new AT&T tightens its grip.
Precisely! And higher prices since the need to innovate and compete is now removed. The "new" AT&T is shaping up to be darned similar in topography and attitude to old Ma Bell.
Is anyone really surprised here? "The New AT&T" was just formed from the merger of a number of competitors -- several companies which had to fight against one another and be creative and attractive to win customers realized that, by merging, they could efectively quit trying and capture these customers by default. The only problem is VOIP -- customers being able to reach outside the traditional telephone providers for voice services -- so they simply ban it and drop these customers in the rudest manner, not even porting the phone #s. Typical attitude of a monopoly-in-the-making. It's not merely coincidence that Vonage is under attack. The whole industry is terrified of VOIP and is using everything in their power (including the courts, lawmakers and near-monopoly market share) to crush innovative new competitors, just like the cable TV companies fought (and continue to fight) Satellite providers.
There is no excuse for not porting telephone #s. I'm normally quite averse to dragging everything through the courts, but here I think it's appropriate. Perhaps a huge class-action lawsuit would gain the attention of the suits at "the New AT&T" and provide remedy to the affected customers.
Personally, I'll be researching alternatives this weekend so I can drop Bell South.. uh, I mean "The New AT&T". They've shown how little they respect their customers. Time to take my money elsewhere. Packet8? SunRocket? Maybe it's time to drop the home phone altogether and simply go cell-only.
Just out of curiousity, can anyone name a company that got *better* after a merger? (Meaning better for customers and/or employees, not simply better for the boardroom or short-term stockholders as is typical.) I can't think one example.
you don't even have to go that far - there are limits on how good a computer can be in the real world, at today's level of technology. nobody has seriously suggested that 256 bit AES is currently breakable by anything, and AES scales - so there is nothing stopping someone implimentating 512 bit or bigger keysizes. at 0.5k per conversation, that 9GB dvd could last you a fairly long time :)
-=DaveHowe=-
AT&T was right there with Verizon giving customer's personal information and calling histories/stats/numbers to the Bush administration when they asked - without a warrant.
The only company that I know of that refused to give such information to the Bush administration was Qwest.
Why people are willing to continue to reward a company that violates your privacy in return for special consideration is beyond me. People should drop AT&T and Verizon if it is at all possible.
The existing system has an interface from the telcos to the emergency operator system that has a large number of assumptions about what the phone network looks like, as well as telco-style interface technology, and would require major redesign to accommodate different technologies - but the emergency operator systems don't have a funding source that lets them do that, so the regulators are making the carriers interface to them like old telcos, even if they really really aren't. Here are some of the kinds of assumptions that need to be worked with:
- A phone sits in one place in a building.
- The building sits in one place.
- The place where the building sits has one police station, one fire company, and one or more ambulance companies that serve it.
- There's a wire from the telco to the building.
- The caller wants the police/fire/ambulance to show up at the building.
- There's a phone number associated with the wire (not the phone.)
- There's a specific telco that supports that phone number, and the telco has records about the building and phone. (Number portability regulations did entertaining things to that one...)
- If the phone's supported by a PBX, and the phone has an individual number usable for outgoing calls, there are telco records that indicate which floor the phone's on, but otherwise the emergency vehicle should show up at the front door. (Even *that* had a lot of complexity to it.)
- If you move the phone, at least to a different floor, or change the phone number, or move the phone number to a different building, you'll let the telco know.
- The regulations can be different for wireline telcos, because they know where the real wires are, than for non-wireline telco-like carriers (like Vonage, and the pre-merger long-distance AT&T.)
- Hey, no they can't! 911 has to work everywhere! - regardless of any infrastructure differences.
It's a really ugly mess (and CALEA makes it far worse for anybody it applies to.) There are some service providers who can handle the interface equipment parts of PSAP connectivity, but you still need to find a way to make your databases have *some* resemblence to the information the regulators need - even if it inherently *doesn't* work that way.For cell phones, at the time the Feds wanted to make 911 work, it was obvious that the wireline assumptions just wouldn't work, because your cellphone is usually not at the place your phone bill or phone number live, and even aside from the FBI wiretap-freaks wanting to radically expand their surveillance capabilities, it's a hard problem if you want accurate location information - and the PSAP structure isn't usually very good at dealing with non-street-addressed location information. I've got a fairly recent GSM-based phone, but the last time or two that I've tried to report car accidents in San Francisco, the 911 operators have connected me to the California Highway Patrol rather than the local police, because the CHP seems to know how to deal with moving callers, while the PSAP system would otherwise need to guess whether I was inside the SF city limits, or in Daly City or Brisbane, based on my description of what freeway signs I was near, and assign the call to the correct police department.
The new regulations on VOIP carriers, as far as I can tell, seem to assume that any carrier who's connecting to the wireline public telephone system and isn't a known cellphone carrier can be treated as a wireline carrier even if that's not what their system does. It's a big problem.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks