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FairPort Accused of Faking Network Readiness Test
wytcld writes "When Verizon spun off its Northern New England lines to FairPoint, FairPoint leased Verizon's computer network to manage them. This was costly, so FairPoint readied its own network. To prove its own network was ready for the switchover a demonstration was prepared for an outside auditor, Liberty. Now a whistleblower claims: '...when Liberty was watching what they thought was "flow thru" within a system and from one system to another, they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do. They were not actually in the systems at the time nor were they in the test systems. They were in a newly created small program that used screen shots from the real system to deceive the audience into believing that they were watching a real demonstration.' How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick? Whether or not the test was faked, the network has proved so unready that FairPoint is close to bankruptcy, and may have its licenses to operate revoked in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont."
Help! New Hampshire Internet Refugee here -
.. computers.
The reports slamming Fairpoint have not been exaggerated, I work in the tech industry in NH, and I have seen countless problems with many of my clients who have fairpoint. I personally have had endless frustration-
A new 7.1 mbps service that took them 3 months and 1000 calls later to actually hook up! The techs there seem to have little idea of what's going on, and each promises a phone call back that never happens. They've mastered stalling techniques such as "Well I put it in the system, but we'll have to wait 24-72 hours for it to 'go through'"
"go through!?" Let me tell you guys something, this is the tech's way of not dealing with you. When my problem finally got fixed (I had finally gotten through to a top tier tech), he was on the phone with me and went, oh I see the problem, and it was fixed instantly. There is no magical factory of oompa loompas out back processing these cpu instructions- it's a fucking computer network run by
Techs decide what they can and cannot do in order to get off the phone with you as soon as possible, conveinently never having access to that part of the system that can FIX anything.
There's nothing good going on behind the scenes at fairpoint, and their staff are a bunch of jokers. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get on the phone with their billing department and figure out why my auto-pay billing keeps billing but never charges the card! I've got over $300 in late fees.. and I don't know why!
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick?
Very easy. While auditors tend to do a good job of detecting whether a report is realistic, their main objective is to get you to sign off saying, "This is what we do." Then, if you do not do that, you are personally liable.
They aren't detectives (though they often do some of that as well), they are guarantors of accountability. Your-ass-uncoverers for the CYA generation, if you will.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
First, if you don't know what a word means, please don't use it. Even if you think you know, it's most likely that you will use it wrongly.
Second, so what does this mean for users?
Ever heard about Darwin? Sad for the company though...
"they were really only seeing a small program that was created to assimilate what they wanted the systems to do"
that statement makes little sense to me as it stands and i'm wondering if the person misspoke and meant to say "simulate". or am i missing something (perhaps someone would care to explain)?
Moar liek FailPort amirite?!?!
I read that company name as "FailPort". Makes more sense actually.
sigh, embarrassed to admit, but was forced by employer to do the same thing at the FAA once. Talk about a scary thought.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
For several years, Enron fooled investors, market watchers, government, and even its employees, with shady accounting practices that were "audited." As it turned out, the auditing firm, Arthur Anderson, was part of the fraud.
It wouldn't surprise me that the same thing happens in IT auditing.
Check the article title.
Next week we'll learn that Fairpoint is being approved for a government bailout Stimulus Package.
...that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."
I used to have to work with both FairPoint and Verizon with my IT duties( I had to manage mutiple t-1). It was very nice working with Verizon. I would connect to the Verizon PCC in Boston, and they didn't mess around. Even when I would call at 3 am, they had people on it. Usually tookem them less than an hour to fix ANYTHING. FailPoint, I would leave a message with FairPoint's voicemail. They usually would get someone on it withion 24 hours. Usually.
I got burned bad by this myself. In the interest of not having to retype a LOT, here's the complaint I sent to Maine's PUC, which got forwarded to someone high up at Fairpoint:
We initially contacted Fairpoint to establish DSL service near the end of January, 2009. We were informed that because of the computer system changeover, that someone would be contacting me in early February to complete our order and give us our install date, which was predicted to be roughly mid-February. After not hearing from a Fairpoint representative by mid-February, I called to follow up, and after several phone calls where I was basically told "we're still transitioning, and can't get to your order," our original order was found, and we were given an install date of March 3. On March 2, having not yet received the equipment for our DSL service, I called again, and after being on hold for roughly 5-10 min while the customer service rep was "checking on our order," I was told that we were still scheduled to have service turned on for March 3, and our equipment would most likely be recieved that same day.
After not receiving anything on March 3, I called Fairpoint again that afternoon. At that point, I was told that the computer was showing that the order was never completed because it was showing that service was not available. At this point, the rep offered to have a technician come out and check our area to see if this was actually the case. I was told that we would be called with the results of this check, and to expect a 7-10 day wait before hearing back. We were never called back with the results of this check.
In mid-March, I called to follow up on the supposed check that was done. They were not able to find our previous order anywhere in the computer system. After repeatedly being put on hold so they could try and find the previous order, eventually a new order was placed. At this point, we decided to sign up for both telephone and DSL service, as we were offered a bundle package at that time. This order was given the order number mentioned above, with the phone service date of April 2, and DSL service as of April 6.
As we had to go and purchase a phone, we were not able to test the telephone service until April 3. When the service was tested, it was not yet working. I placed another call to Fairpoint, where I was told that there was still an account from a previous tenant at our address in the system when our order was placed, and this placed a hold on our order. Note that we had lived at the service address since late January of '09, and in none of my previous calls had I been told about any existing account at this address. This hold was supposedly cleared, and they said that the phone should be working within a few days, and the DSL a few days after that.
A week later, we still had no service of any sort. I placed yet another call to Fairpoint, and was told this time that there were multiple orders in our name for our address, including one for another telephone number, but all of our information. I was also told that there was showing a problem with the third-party verification that Fairpoint uses, and this is now why our order was on hold. This issue was supposedly cleared, and again I was told to give the phone a few days, and to watch for the DSL equipment to arrive.
On April 17, we still had no service. I called Fairpoint yet again, and was again told that the previous account that was at our address was the source of the problem. After being put on hold for at least 10 minutes while the rep called to another department to try and get things worked out, I was told that everything was taken care of, and I should have a working phone by Monday or Tuesday of this week, and the DSL service would take a few days longer.
As of today, the "Tuesday of Next week" mentioned above, we still have no service. Multiple calls to the "Installation Service" telephone number since 8am today of 866-980-0642 that the last Fairpoint rep I spoke to provided me with only get me a recor
Everybody around here hates Fair Point. Thank God for reliable, fast, and consistent Comcast. Sadly, I don't think I am being sarcastic.
All they did was trick themselves into consumer hate and bankruptcy.
Dolts die and FairPort is a dolt.
We absolutely had nothing at that point except for design documentation (very much a 'waterfall' process type company.)
So the guys walks in, and we point him to two workstations, one manned by a team member, and both with headsets already layed out. He walks over to the workstation, puts on the headset, and starts talking to our guy.
"The voice quality is absolutely amazing! Tremendous! It's better than my landline at home!"
After that, we took him out for beers, and drove him to the airport next morning. Everything cool as can be.
Of course, both headsets were just plugged into POTS lines. We'd dialed over to the other workstation before he got there.
We didn't feel so bad in the end. We got that project done in time, and since the target network was way over-engineered and partitioned for just this purpose, we were able to actually use a codec that's better quality than POTS.
I read that as "Failpoint accused of faking..." Though, given the details, I guess that would have been a pretty accurate headline too.
1. Fake Auditing Tests 2. Assimilate 3. ???? 4. Profit
Here's what it says,
So it seems that the whistleblower is Borg. The only thing missing is the part about resistance being futile. Which it seems to be when you're dealing with Verizon, so maybe that part's implied.
WORSE than VZ? Wow, that really MUST suck!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
...is another shining example of the quality work produced by the American education system.
1. According to the whistleblower article, the last names of the president and CEO of FairPoint is "Nixon" and "Johnson", where Nixon is the president of the company. Johnson was CEO before Hauser took over in June. Well there's your problem, the company's run by President Nixon!
2. The new CEO, Hauser responded concerning the fraud allegations, "We take these allegations seriously and will do a thorough investigation". To paraphrase: "We know we're busted, and we intend to do a very thorough cover-up considering billions of dollars are on the line."
It would be unbelieveably easy to fool an auditor in out S-Ox Audits. Heck, we could fool anyone brought in to audit the auditors if we liked. They dont have the time or technicalknowledge to understand the systems they are auditing. They ask for information which is pointless and easily faked ('can we have a screen shot of you AD domain security policies') and frankly they just dont care. These guys make the TSa look like experts. This is my primary issue with S-Ox as a regulation. It doesnt work. Its security theatre at its best(worst). so even though my boss/company follows the rules, we could easily not do so and still have our CEO/CFO sign off with noone the wiser.
WTF??
Did you look at Sovernet Communications?
This is the first time Fairpoint has shown any competence in anything since they took over!!!!!!
"For several years, the Obama Admin fooled the populace...."
Um, while, I'm no fan of the Obama Administration, they haven't been in office for 'years'.
They may well be fudging the books, but we'll have to wait for just a little while.
Of course, the dot-com bubble was fueled in part by the Big Eight firms handling auditing, IPOs, and investment banking for many of those dot-coms that went public, scooped huge barrels full of money, and then burned it all with nothing but technology others bought for pennies on the dollar and went on to make actual money. Obvious conflict of interest that lead to many of the Big Eight dying off.
Enron being just the most obvious example.
Give the Obama team a chance. They can do better...;)
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
In this region Fairpoint is often the only choice for highspeed internet. If there is another option, it's Comcast who was forging rst packets, and blocking connections willy nilly. I was unable to use a VPN to my office, because Comcast deemed it bad traffic. Beyond that, if you try to use your 800 Billion free hours of AOL or other dialup, often times the phone lines are original copper from the early 1900s and won't even support 56k dialup.
If you pay good money for an audit and the auditor collects that fee but hasn't the foggiest idea what is going on - then he's at fault and he should lose his license! What the hell is wrong with everyone? The auditor attests to the truth of a report. This auditor wouldn't have known the truth if he was sitting in it.
I remember when FairPoint was trying to take over, the local NPR station in Maine was coming out with an almost-daily feature on specific points of the FairPoint readiness plan. Some of them would have gotten me caught under the new Maine distracted driving law because they were so ridiculous I (as a non-FairPoint customer) was laughing so hard I almost drove off the interstate.
My favorite was the costs assumption. FairPoint, in their infinite wisdumb, decided that the cost of gasoline would remain fixed at $2 or less for a period of no less than seven years. Gas was about $2 at the time the report was written and was documented as such, and $3 when the report was evaluated by the various state legislatures. A few legislators even mentioned that point specifically after the NPR story on it broke. Then, suddenly, it was a non-issue even though the report never changed.
But there were LOTS of things like this. Assumptions that labor costs wouldn't change, assumptions that their customer base would increase by some incredible percentage while support costs would remain fixed or drop, assumptions on the cost of running new cable and upgrading Internet infrastructure that were apparently based on most of the work being done by elves while the workers slept and service being provided by the magical Internet Faeries instead of actual bandwidth from Level3.
FairPoint made up numbers for the auditors, that much is true. But most of their fabrications were obvious enough to be on the daily news. Obviously, the legislatures of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont don't listen to NPR. Or FairPoint and Verizon executives could afford enough bribe money or had the incriminating photos. You choose.
We got what we (or FairPoint) paid for.
STILL glad I'm a Vonage customer.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
So, what happens if VT, NH, and/or ME decide to revoke Fairpoint's license to operate? Before you threaten someone, think through the consequences. Verizon won't buy it back, they're busy building out high-speed service in urban areas, and they don't want to deal with someplace as rural as Northern New England. Who steps in? Maybe Burlington Telecom (the local cable service in Burlington, VT). Seriously, is there an actual alternative to "making this work?"
Over the source of this summer, two Vermont areas have lost 911 service overnight with FairPoint having a lax attitude about fixing it. The first was an unspecified technical error limiting the Grand Isle region to calling out to one exchange, effectively nixing 911. The second incident involved a line breaking, cutting service to the town of Fair Haven completely. Despite many calls, FairPoint said it could wait until morning.
On top of this is an abundance of service outages and billing errors which, despite what they say, still persist. I truly hope the three states' PSB's kick this joke of a company out of New England for good.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
I've been a Sovernet user for years. Despite the fact that they lease those lines (last I knew) they havent had a sliver of the troubles FairPoint has. I am happy to be a Sovernet user.
I dont know if their support is outsources since they were bought up by a different company and moved from that cute road-fork office in Bellows Falls, though.
I often said if they dicked me around with support I'd drag them into Nick's down the street and "change" their minds, but, to their ultimate and pleasing credit, Ive never even been frustrated with them. I recommend Sover to everyone in the area.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
I used (used to being the key word) to work for Capgemini, the lead systems integrator for Fairpoint (FRP)
the small program isn't the issue (as made out to be), it was the rushed schedule (only 1yr and 4 is months) for changing verizon's 200+ systems from years of mergers and splits into 16 theoretically modern network mgmt systems
That program was likely a small item on the line provisioning side that was changing DB flags to say things were provisioned. When someone orders a phone line (plain old telephone service or POTS) you can't really find a phone line cooper pair from a switch to their house and provision it for POTS service in a test environment. So some stuff has to be stubbed. Still its funny they failed, def worth a chuckle.
In a very large scale banking center we used to just change the color palates on the PC's used to display warning messages, and the managers and application auditors never noticed anything.
It is absolutely the worst company that my company does outsourced support for. I never have any information that I would like to give to the customer when they call in. I regularly get calls where they have been out of service or over a week, and when I bother the NOC about it they just ignore me. Makes me look like the idiot when I am actually attempting to give some quality of service.
I'll keep them brief.
When had a LAN line through Verizon, we didn't use it so when cancelled with Verizon before the changeover. After the change over we get a bill from FairPoint with a credit of $36. We laughed and called FairPoint to cancel the line. They said they would. We keep getting bills, sometimes we owe them, sometimes there is a credit (keep in mind this is for a line that has NEVER been used, even under Verizon).
We have had numerous dates come and go as to when DSL would be available in our area (still isn't to this day).
My wife's uncle let his DSL bill lapse, they disconnected him. He pays the bill current but they can't turn the service back on because he was too far from the CO, apparently his 100plus year old house drifted in the few days his service was disconnected. It took 2 months of fighting with FairPoint to get it turned back on (I could write a novel on that particular experience).
A few months later my wife's uncle stops receiving FairPoint bills, he gets stuck in a catch 22 where FairPoint won't let him pay without the bills, but he's not receiving them. Luckily he gets the issue resolved before they shut him off again.
We have had numerous new customers where we arrive onsite to setup a network only to findout that FairPoint is dragging ass. We get paid for doing nothing but there are many customers out there that had to pay because FairPoint dropped the ball.
Yeah, Vermonter here. I dropped Failpoint and went with Comcast for internet AND phone, when Failpoint refused to recognize the existence of my new apartment despite already providing service to the only other unit. The chronicles of my hellish move that cost me an extra month's rent thanks to Failpoint can be found here.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I'm in NH and hoping that FairPoint fails and Verizon comes back to the area. Then perhaps we can get FiOS up here and I can also tell Comcast to go screw off.
In the spring I wanted to get my landline which was an MCI account moved over to FairPoint as my bill had gotten out of control due to all of the line-leasing fees, etc. It took them 3 months. THREE MONTHS to do what amounted to an accounting change. Even then I had periods where they screwed it up so bad that my phone was shut off for 3 days, had no long distance, and had no caller-ID etc. It's like watching a power plant run by a bunch of monkeys.
The PUC people that got bribed into OKing this deal should be sent away.
Those of us in New England all knew this was going to happen. We beat up on our public utilities commissions telling them as much, but Fairpoint and Verizon railroaded this through. How the PUC people could ignore the obvious only suggests rampant corruption. I'd love to see all of those commissioners audited. They clearly weren't looking out for the public's best interests.
Yeah the nice thing about Sovernet Communications is they will beat Verizon (now Fairpoint) over the head for you. The copper may be leased, but the CO (central office) equipment is Sovernet's, and the support is local. The long distance however is WAY TOO expensive.