Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I find it entirely appropriate, if not prescient.
but I cannot find instances of any rude mails. Looks like somebody has tried to make it more sensational in the summary.
We don't care, we're the phone company.
Provide some kind of index, checked against credit card records, only available to emergency services?
Doesn't this seem logical and easy? So much of this stuff is handled online, eventually sure we'll all be using wireless + Voip, and then we'll need the router to provide a location, but still this all seems really really easy. Something people would be willing to fill out (Especially as it's so easy to secure [One time use based on 911 contact and then changed, change can be written back to the caller]).
AT&T should know better than anyone that breaking up is hard to do. Talk about a short institutional memory.
Governor Sio Bibble: A communications disruption could mean only one thing: invasion.
No sig for now.
All the monopolistic tendencies that you love and none of that silly customer service stuff...
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
At LEAST they could've offered an alternative telco plan in that e-mail. I'm sure that would've brought a smile!
Life is not for the lazy.
Anyone needed another reason to hate AT&T... :)
Here it is!
~Hal
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?
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!
Welcome to the new AT&T.
Fuck you very much.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
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
Can you hear me now? heh
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.
Apparently it's not supported in some areas. May be inconvenient, but having no way to get help in an emergency sucks way more.
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.
e911 basically just puts up on the operaters screen your location info.
without e911, you can call 911 fine, you just have to tell them where you are, just like it used to be.
i don't particularly see why it is so critical.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Injured person: It's a green house.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
They are allowed to become a monopoly once again.
They are allowed to do anything they want.
They are dropping VOIP customers because IPs can be spoofed and firewalls used.
It was messing with the NSA's equipment in tracking people.
They're using their grammar skills there.
It struck me as absolutely bizzare that SBC would want to be associated with the AT&T monopoly identity. Now I see that it goes even further than just a brand association, it is a monopoly mentality in customer management. As long as AT&T thinks that they can get away with treating their customers this way they will continue to treat them this way.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
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
These stuff show company philosophies. You shouldnt expect anything that would mean caring for the customer from a company that tried to control and spoil one of the biggest inventions of all time, the internet.
Since it was not profitable, they just scratched off their customers and thats that. Same approach with net neutrality; "Im gonna screw anyone in any fashion as long as i can, and then do away with them"
Read radical news here
You wouldn't until the day you call but are incapable of speaking. Or the 5 year old calls to tell them daddy won't wake up.
E911 was created to overcome these problems and enhanced the system.
The Slashdots who protest about how simple it all is should roll up their sleeves and dig into the issue. Money to be made, I'm sure.
You are correct you know. Power makes right. They can lose money on an individual as long as they make enough elsewhere to make up for it.
:-)
Monday Morning I need to go to the bank anyways and I'll pay their bill in full. I already have the high ground on their Pres and I'll keep it.
When choosing any strategy one has to size up the playing field.
Good counsel.
Perhaps what I will do since we have letters in the mail is declare that I will pay the bills one (1) week late until my answering service is running or something like this and refuse to pay their late fees.
One has to look at where a phone company is vulnerable.
(1) Sales departments. These people _always_ answer the phone.
(2) Investor relations.
(3) Legal. This is a very very vulnerable target because litigation is expensive and profit margins are getting thinner. Other comments were how a lawyer loved a challenge. Sure. But when the bean counters start to add up the cost the lawyer is not going to be so glib.
(4) Letter. Always have a track record and always stay on the winning side of the case. Chose your strategy wisely.
Perhaps I didn't. But I can still pay on Monday and it was a Damn good Rant even for SlashDot and I feel good!
besides. I can live without the answering service or plug in my machine from 15 years ago. It is an AT&T machine! Yup. I bought the best even tho I'm in Canada! ha!
Thanx man!
With cable or DSL, you can choose among dozens of VOIP services. Who cares whether AT&T offers one too?
Ooh, ooh. I've heard this kind of issue before. Seeing as I work support for a cable company (that will remain nameless) doing VoIP support, let's go through this line by line and translate, shall we?
The Phone Company DOES care. You damn right they care. They like to get paid.
I think my phone company is nothing but a bunch of greedy bastards, so I will use this fact to treat anyone I deal with from said company like a piece of shit.
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.
I am self-important and feel that I have the right to talk to someone right away at busy times, screw anyone waiting patiently in the queue, I shouldn't have to wait 5, er... 40 minutes for a rep!
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?
My answering service stopped working at the same time I was dealing with other billing issues, most likely something that happened while dealing with those issues, something that got overlooked by the rep that legal had me dealing with, but rather than bring it up with them, I'd rather just not pay my bill, because if its not fixed magically, I'LL SUE, I TOLD THEM I'D SUE!@111111
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.
Always talk to legal first instead of the people paid to help you. They'll go out of their way to just shut you up so you're not a nuisance. You always come before anyone else, after all!
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.
Some rep called me sounding important, so it had to be the company president. He has nothing better to do than talk with me, of course! Anyway, apparently either I made a payment in escrow or mailed a check and did not give enough time for it to PROCESS before the due date, and also decided they charged me too much, so I didn't pay the minimum due. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DISCONNECT MY SERVICE IF I SEND PAYMENT 2 DAYS BEFORE THE DUE DATE WHAT I THINK IS DUE!
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.
HOW DARE THEY GIVE ME FLACK FOR MAKING PAYMENTS AT THE LAST SECOND! If they are still processing the check and can't verify if it has cleared, ITS NOT MY PROBLEM! I don't have time in my busy life for things like mailing payments a week or more ahead of time, or making credit card payments online/over the phone! I told that
My strategy in small claims which is available to me here in Canada and which for the most part seems to be pretty fair is this.
1) file.
2) ask for a court order to reconnect the service.
3) While doing #2, pay into the court about $1000 bux to back up my request. I owe them $71 bux.
4) have all the paper work in order.
This gives the Judge the latitude to find me at fault if he wishes to do so and totally puts the telephone company in the defensive. The dispute becomes clearly one of service offered and payment offered and the payment is in the court. If the service is not offered then they have to defend their position.
I simply want my answering service running. I don't need to care how they do it even if I actually do know how they do it... and I do. What I don't know is why it is not working. This is their problem.
I think a court will find it unreasonable for them to expect me to wait on hold while they sort out why something they are responsible is not working. All that should be required is for me to communicate to them that the service they offer is not working.
I have communicated this over several months and so far - they have not picked up the ball.
I will say to anyone contemplatimg court. Put your money where your mouth is. If you ask for something be prepared to back it up with more than a whine.
Well this doesn't bode well for VOIP on the iPhone, under Cingular, does it?
AT&T uses dsl for their internet service. I find it amusing that they even offered voip. You have a phone connection right there to use. Who cares if their long distance is cheaper. You still have to pay for the entire service.
1) we exchanged names. I know who he is. I have not mentioned names.
/. I suspect many of their technical staff do read /.
2) I back up the bills paid with paper work.
3) They had from February 2006 until Nov 2006 to fix the bill. They didn't do it. I complained every month.
4) My answering service has not been running from Nov 2006 until now.
5) They have my phone # my fax # and my email address(s). I am easy to get ahold of. I do not put people on hold.
6) I usually pay my bills before the due date. I walk over to the bank which is within about 2 blocks once or twice a month. I take my bills due over the next couple weeks with me and pay them.
Your interpretation is posted for the world to view. If it goes to court you can get transcripts.
(short form)
I did nothing wrong here. I am illustrating in a fashion that does not expose the management of any firms what the issues are. I do not know if the CEO of the firm in question reads
I do think that many people might look at several strategies required to deal with the issues and I have posted elsewhere in this thread comments on what the companies are facing... which is perhaps a death sentence... but I won't go that far.
From your comments I would also conclude that you have not been in court as often as I have. If so... then I recommend you avoid court. To get $10 bux out be prepared to put $100 in. You have to convince the judge and these people are very experienced. You have to choose the correct side. If you plan on going to court then you better be prepared to back up what you say.
Dear Judge:
I was visiting a friend when he had a heart attack. I picked up their phone to dial 911 and it didn't work. Now he's dead.
So why couldn't the PHONE COMPANY make a phone that works with 911? My friend's lawyer is now suing you for eleventy-billion dollars.
And he's going to get it.
The lawyer now owns (literally, not "ownz") AT&T.
And you're not convinced that this strategic move wasn't actually inspired by the Verizon patent take-down of Vonage? I realize that this may a bit tinfoil-hatish, but why not move everybody back you your landlines. You'll probably make more money, and you'll avoid a court date with Verizon. Sounds like a win for AT&T. And in the game of corporations, winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Probably a precursor to AT&T blocking all VOIP traffic on their lines. Hmmmm, anti-trust.
Economics of Net Neutrality
Which "they" are you talking about? SBC has been offering that fixed IP service for at least four years now. Esentially it's their "business class" DSL with the name filed off. I have the 6M/384K service (though I get either 604 or 640 up) for $99/mo or so.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
In my neighborhood, we have a bulk agreement with the local cable TV agreement to get their VOIP service. Naturally it's total crap. Vonage over their cable modem is less crap. I'm trying to get a damn phone, a regular copper POTS phone but the phone company won't wire us up due to the bulk agreement. I have a bunch of "high tech" options available to me (cell, VOIP, cable VOIP, VOIP over fixed wireless), but not a single damn one of them work for me as well as a straight up two wire copper phone right out of the late 70s.
Power goes out, possibly for a week at a time? Copper phones work. Need to fax something? Copper phones work. Every try fighting a DirecTV Tivo to dial out over VOIP? Copper phones work. Can you wire your home's alarm system to your cell phone (without that extra $150 device and an extra $10 a month)? Copper phones work. Someone calls in while your cable modem is glitching again? Copper phones work. Need to dial 911? Copper phones work.
I'm not some kind of luddite here (/. id in the low 4 digits), but when you need rock solid 99.99999% reliability, you can't beat the old tech that's been around for decades upon decades.
Well, I'd like to think my $80 3072:768 static-IP business-class DSL can stand up fairly well against a 1544:1544 T1 connection...
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I'm so happy I live in RI. Here, the state and it's citizens own the E-911 system. We only get the intrado db lookup from Verizon. So it's no problem to get VoIP to work with our E-911 system.
But at&t is blowing smoke up peoples asses and they should know it. They OWN the damned E-911 systems and could easily interconnect it. But they won't because they're trying to prop up dying copper pair.
Coax and fiber are the future, not copper pair, at least not for OSP. As it is right now, the regional operators (All three of them!) have pretty much no idea what they have for OSP when it comes to copper. Let me qualify that a little, in the corridors between Boston and New York, then Chicago, etc, cities, they have no clue.
The nice thing about coax or fiber is that it has broadband characteristics, so provisioning is done at the terminal ends, not the OSP side.
Long (like anti-trust old AT&T breakup) time Southern Bell / Bell South customer here. This is precisely the reason why I'm sad to see BellSouth leave and the new AT&T arrive. More CC (corporately correct) behavior than ever and fewer customer services. Everyone can look forward to more crap and less service as the new AT&T tightens its grip.
- Adults who live in houses, as opposed to transient youngsters who move from apartment to apartment
- People with DSL connections
- People that understand how 911 works
- People that understand that the landline is pretty darn reliable, and that using only a mobile is a Single Point of Failure
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I take no end of grief for being (evidently) the only one in the county who doesn't yet have a cellphone. Fact is that being reachable at all times isn't real important to me. I know cells have an off switch, but people get offended if you use them as much as I likely would.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I too have a landline as a phone+DSL package. However, I'd ditch the phone service if I could. There's only one telco out here in the boonies and they gouge us like you wouldn't believe. ($35/mo for *basic* phone service, no long distance, for example.) I finally broke down and got a cellphone too. Not because I wanted one, but because I couldn't call anyone from my landline anymore. Everyone has a cell, so everyone is "long distance" to my landline.
Worse, mobile phone service out here is non-existent from anyone but Verizon, and even then, it's analog service half the time. This is rural Ohio we're talking about, not the middle of the badlands.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
That's why about 15 years ago we did this:
http://jroger.com/jr4.jpg
Sold posters and tshirts of it with the words 'We came, We saw, We conquered."
Been thinking of starting up the tshirts again now that our fav monopoly is back and kept the same death star logo.
Maybe AT&T is just trying to avoid what Vonage is getting.
There's nothing about upstream bandwidth that makes it cost more than downstream, and nothing about DSL that makes it asynchronous. It's simply an artificial limitation by ISPs... because they can.
"Just now" must mean "from the very first DSL installation".
The cost issue is the same. They charge twice as much, because they can... It's really a trivial cost, under $5. Also, my dynamic IP address hasn't changed in months, and I imagine many others can say the same...
No, but it isn't worth a $900 mark-up, every single month, either.
I'll take the $100 DSL, and privately HIRE a few professionals to come out and fix the lines immediately, if I ever have such a need.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
>>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.
What is the issue? They're not offering service.....to whom....for what reason?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
to us.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
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=-
I suppose in this respect AT&T is doing us a favor. They could be finding a way to wiretap our VIOP and continuing service. But instead they are rudely disconnecting users. This may sound cruel, but it accomplishes several things
(1) they get a piece of that "do no evil" thing that's in vogue nowadays (see "google")
(2) they are actually being very polite in not slamming people for the actual reason they are refusing to go with this (I would not be so kind!)
(3) the abrupt manner of their disconnect both meets their goals AND causes a big public stink that thrusts the issue again into the daylight for all to see
This is AT&T fighting it the only way they can. We could really not ask for any better. If you're a VOIP customer, sorry this is not going to be pleasant, but would you really prefer the alternative?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...that they have an alternative to the service provider that he currently has. In many situations the glib "why don't you go elsewhere" doesn't even apply.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
When a coworker left Vonage for Rogers Home Phone he found the same problem. The question is why? I am curious
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.
Geolocation on E911 is nice to have, but is it really needed straight-away? The 911 service is improved by the information but is it really essential? Have they totally disabled the dispatcher's ability to enter an address as an interim measure? OK, back to the present. Geolocating a fixed IP address at a static location is easy. The only issue is when you have a dynamic address. Then toiu need to tie down DHCP leases to lines. Not a hard thing. Well not unless you are a telco who is very scared of a business that they don't understand too well.
See my journal, I write things there
If you are willing to invest a little time, you can already get pretty much all of this at a similar pricepoint. Buy a Linksys SPA 3102 and an Asus WL500 Premium; install OpenWRT and Asterisk on the Asus router; and connect it to the Linksys. Voila, instant VoIP PBXo
If you still have a POTS line, use it to route 911 calls, local calls (unless you have a metered line), and toll-free calls using the FXS port on the SPA3102. All other outgoing calls go over VoIP. If you open an account with one of the BetaMax companies (e.g. internetcalls.com), you can get very cheap long-distance and international calling; the pricing model for these companies is a little unusual, so it is hard to exactly say how much you'll pay, but it should work out as somewhere between $3 and $4/mo.
For incoming calls, you can either use the FXS port and a POTS line, or you can get a phone number that rings your VoIP phone. There are a few companies that give you those numbers for free (usually with limited availability per area code), and a whole bunch of others that give you arbitrary US numbers for a small monthly fee. Many other countries have similar deals. Browse voip-info.org for more details and suggestions.
If you need additional FXO ports, just get a used PAPv2 of eBay (about $20), unlock it (if the model that you got was locked), and you'll end up with two more ports for plugging in your telephones. In fact, if you don't even have a POTS line anymore, you can just get a PAPv2 instead of a SPA3102. That'll save you about $50.
As an additional benefit, you can set up a callback or dial-through number on your Asterisk router, giving you cheap international calls from your cellphone.
I agree that all of this is not quite as slick as David Rowe's router, but you can get it now, and it won't cost you more than $100 or $200 (depending on exactly how many ports you need).
The cellular industry moved pretty quickly when Congress/the FCC mandated location capabilities in their service (even though it still sucks to some extent). But the land-line operators don't seem to care or perhaps they are happy to pull the rug out from under a competing technology. The problem is that the market demands the newer technology (in some form or other) and is adopting it in one form or another.
Have gnu, will travel.
I work for a nationwide VOIP company that is in direct competition with AT&T. We just secured the largest law firm in the country as a customer, beating out AT&T. Perhaps this is the reason they stopped doing voip?
When they call, say "I do not give you permission to tape this call".
That befuddles them for a good 3 minutes when you get them to turn off the machine.
Then when they tell you that they're going to do the same thing that they said last time but didn't, ask them this key question:
"If you've tried to do this 3 times and it didn't work, what will you try differently this time?"
And be insistent if they can't give you an answer.
It's a good question, one they can never really resolve properly. It pisses them off, because the question basically calls the service rep an idiot, but it's so polite they can't really get mad.
Then insist everything be sent via FedEx overnight because you can rightly claim they're either lying or incompetent when they claim to have sent you the documents 3 times, claiming it was "lost" every time.
Finally, after it's resolved, and you pay the final bill, pay about $1.05 more than the bill. Then just let them send you bills forever, burning up 40 cents each time.
Then after they've done this for a few years, call and ask them for a check.
Look, people say "don't screw with the reps, they're only doing their job", but the truth is the company uses reps as a shield to not provide good service. It sucks to screw with these people, but it's not the customer's fault. It's the company's fault, as they provide poor service and expect polite people to just calmly sit by and not take the bull by the horns.
I had a problem with fake charges on my credit card, I saw them in real time happening, and the company steadfastly refused to do anything about it, despite calls, multiple registered letters, 13-14 conversations. The only way I got it was to figure out the desk number of one customer rep and basically call her repeatedly until she did something to get it fixed. When she put me on hold, I'd hang up and call her right back. I was the customer from hell. I felt bad for her, but on the other hand, the company had set up a system whereby they would just claim to be "working on it" for months meanwhile still billing you for charges that are false. Sucked to be her that week, but it got done. Nobody really wants to be a jerk, but companies force you into it and then throw the customer reps under the bus. I guess that's how you make big money in big business.
Actually, I think you could.
I've heard of ciphers where which letter encrypts to what depends on some special word: you use ROT+1 with B, ROT+13 with M, ROT+26 with A (do math for rest of possible transitions), and War and Peace as your first one-time pad. I'm sure there'd be some equivalent using the patterns in DVDs for Citizen Kane, 2001, Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace, Rocky IV, or The Care Bears Movie.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
He said it wasn't a constructive option. I think it safe to assume that rude AT&T customer-service reps. aren't trying to do anything constructive.
I think the idea is that if you want AT&T to do something constructive for you, it's more likely to happen if you're not rude to them.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
But even if you've got a fixed IP address with IPv6, you're less likely to communicate it to somebody by printing it on your business card and handing it to them than you were with your IPv4 address - you're probably going to use a presence server of some kind (whether it's SIP or something proprietary like Skype), or at least a DNS server (bob@voip.example.com), or email it to them, and all of those mechanisms introduce potential vulnerabilities if you're not careful with them. 128-bit end-to-end encryption is enough to keep anybody from breaking into your phone call, so the obvious attack methods are to get you to relay the voice channel through somewhere, or else relay the key exchange through somewhere that can be cracked.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Oh I see - I have the opposite problem. VoIP is not the only landline to my house. I have POTS via MCI and I'm wondering if there's a way I get AT&T to just ignore E911 because the service is unstable and most of the time it breaks into my dialing and makes me verify if I have moved or not in order to process E911 correctly, which as I said, I don't care about. That would be the kicker if they turned me off because of their failure to deliver a redundant service I don't need.
I'd be happier if the FCC would free up the markets, instead of allowing each monopoly to protect its turf. Yes, I think the phone companies should be allowed to broadcast TV. And the TV companies should be allowed to sell phone service. Ditto Clearwire. Heck, I'd like to allow the electric power companies to become fiber-to-the-home ISP's. Now if only I could figure out "incentives" to get them to bury the cables underground.
Anyway, I have never thought very much of AT&T.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
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
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.
Conjecture: the limited supply of such knowledge base experts today is a direct but unintentional result of the early 1990's The Hacker Crackdown.
It's a case of management incompetence.
Or a case of the law of unintended consequences?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Everytime I see their trucks I keep hoping to see their company do an Enron, and their executive team come down with some chronic skin rash while languishing in PMITA prison.
Aspen cant hold every executive's body or their ashes. It would have another booming industry there though, and it would bring housing prices down to saner levels...
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Companies bank on the fact that people generally want to be nice to each other. So they put in a system where you take nice people, make them CSR's, and then refuse to actually give them the authority to do anything other than take info and pass it to "tier 2" support of some kind. Tier 2 can charitably described in many instances as "throwing your complaint in the circular file and keep doing that until you stop calling".
I feel two ways about it... on one hand, who wants to add to the burden of some poor soul just trying to pay the rent. On the other hand, these people are the human shield encouraging large companies to treat customers poorly by counting on people's politeness.
Or to put it another way, if you manage to get 5% of the customers with a legitimate gripe to just drop the issue, you've made 5% more money. So, ethics be damned, and hire a bunch more minimum wage guys to take the fall.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Standard disclaimer: IANAL
I'm not sure what the law is for interstate calls, but in my state (TX) the law used to be that at least one party had to be aware that the recording was being made. Anything further, notice, consent etc, is just courtsey. I think that is pretty much in line with federal law and doesn't extend it.
That means that CSRs in TX need not be able to stop the recording. If the company policy is to record all calls, then they'll be recorded. Personally I've found this useful. I had a recorder and recorded a call to our phone company that my wife made. When she was dropped, I called back and asked to speak with a manager. I was of course asked why and I explained that I wanted to play back the recorded call to the manager. The average CSR doesn't want to deal with the potential of being personally sued nor does the average manager want to deal with being responsible for the department where the suit is originating. Effective isn't a strong enough word.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I wonder if this move might be a precursor to blocking the network ports used for VoIP on AT&T Broadband? If ATT doesn't offer their own VoIP service, it would be a lot easier to impose port blocks that would prevent everyone from using VoIP on their network.
I've seen a lot of this in my roles from first level CSR to middle management (yeah, I'm a PHB but I used to be a phone monkey.) I even tried to get our team to adopt the term Phone Monkey as our name, embrace and extend, but you have to have a thick skin for that. The parent post is in a classic "us vs them" mindset. If this is a common feeling for you Debian Cabbit, then please change jobs or find a new philosophy. You're going to be unhappy and spread your misery until you do. If its just a bad day, then sorry to hear it, but you need to chill a little.
The truth is that there are several possible scenarios that a customer can find themselves in and how they respond can make a huge difference in how the problem is resolved:
Always ask for the name of the person you're dealing with and make a note of it. Call them by name. It gives them the feeling of being responsible
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Goddammit, Slashdot guys, bring back the "haha" tag's visibility! Yes, I know it was getting used a lot, but that's because there are a lot of stories posted here that need it! This is a perfect example!
Ernestine was one of Lily Tomlin's characters on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, which pre-dated SNL by 8 years. One of the features of the show was 'News of the Future' - in 1968 they joked about Ronald Reagan being president in 1988 and in 1969 joked about the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989.A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
You're absolutely right.
However, you must consider that a T1 is intrinsicly expensive. You're essentially paying for 24 analog phone lines to be run from your location to another (usually your ISP, but not necessarily). The infrastructure costs for doing this are certainly not trivial, and it should come as absolutely no surprise that a T1 costs 10-20 times as much as an equivalent DSL line, because the phone company could hypothetically be serving 23 other POTS/DSL customers using those extra pairs in your T1.
Most of the "reliability" factors from the T1 connection come from the fact that the phone company gives a bit more attention to the customer that can afford $1000/month, not to mention that expensive modems/interface devices are a drop in the bucket compared to the yearly cost of a T1. Done properly, DSL is extremely reliable.
Of course, once FTTP (Fiber) becomes prevalent, this entire conversation will be moot. In terms of speed, reliability, and cost (once the initial install's paid for), fiber is far superior to any copper-based connection on the planet.
(Also, if you're REALLY concerned about reliability, you could always buy and multiplex a DSL Line, Cable connection, and an ISDN to be absoultely sure nothing's wrong for less than half the cost of a T1. Throw in an on-demand satelitte uplink if you're really paranoid. Even then, with all the money you're still saving, you'll be able to afford a generator within in a few years for some serious redundancy to power your satelitte when some act of God destroys the rest of the city's infrastructure)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The "box" in question is simply called a router. Any PC can do it, quite easily.
That's not hard at all. Any remotely advanced routing protocol has metrics that are user-defined. OSPF is quite common, and there are several open source implementations. Tell it that the satellite link is astronomically expensive, and it won't ever use it, unless there is no other route. Additionally, OSPF periodically checks delay, and when it sees the satellite link is hundreds of ms, it will automatically (further) discourage the use of that link, when any others are available.
That is a very bad idea. DNS likes to cache look-ups, rather than contacting every server, down the line, for every request. With dynamic IPs, you could potentially have your domain caches, pointing to the old IP address. And so, you may have people unable to get through to your server, on a regular basis.
For smaller companies, that probably wouldn't be much of a concern, but for anyone with a rather important website, it would be absolutely unacceptable.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant