Slashdot Mirror
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Says Switching ISPs Is Too Hard
Jason Koebler writes Did you hear about those Comcast service calls from hell that have been cropping up over the last couple months? So did FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who said today that switching internet service providers is too damn hard, in part because ISPs have grown used to having a monopoly on broadband services. "Once consumers choose a broadband provider, they face high switching costs that include early-termination fees and equipment rental fees," Wheeler said in a speech today. Wheeler didn't specifically say what the FCC will do (if anything) to change that, but said the answer is to help facilitate more true competition: "If those disincentives to competition weren't enough, the media is full of stories of consumers' struggles to get ISPs to allow them to drop service."
Too damn hard? I don't even know how to begin to reply to that.
How can you call it switching when there is no one else to switch to in most places?
I wonder if this is just a cynical attempt to appear "tough on monopolies" -- right before Tom Wheeler guts Net Neutrality forever.
Reminder: next Wednesday is a "Day of Action" to publicize the need to maintain Net Neutrality.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9...
Dingo states the obvious
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Selling your house or breaking your lease, truck rental and fuel to haul all your shit halfway across the continent, being unemployed for however long it takes to find a job within commuting distance of your new home, etc.
0 1 - just my two bits
Comcast doesn't actually advertise this, but they will actually ship you the boxes you need to send them back their equipment if you fill out a form after canceling your service. Saved me a lot of time waiting at one of their branch offices.
How about the FCC does this: If you are an ISP and have taken billions of federal dollars to build out infrastructure, you actually have to do it and offer service to people?
So don't rent any of their equipment. When I first signed up for DSL circa 2006 (yes, I was on dial-up that recently), they gave me the option of buying a modem for like $70, or renting it for some monthly fee. I bought it, of course--saving many many dollars over the years.
Live in the country, another 500 feet away from teh big grey box and I couldn't even get my 1.5mb DSL. As is, I can get 3mb but can't use it because of too much signal loss.
I could switch back to dialup... I'd have to dig out an old computer to act as a dialup box and gateway for my LAN. I could switch to Dish, but the latency will suck for playing games.
Final option would be to go "dry line" and just buy DSL, but that isn't really changing my service - it just changes who I write a check to each month.
So yeah, if you live in an area with what amounts to a monopoly it is very hard to change.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
But the ISP shills (alen and charliemopps) said the lack of choice is because of that bully Netflix. If they'd stop abusing the poor ISPs then we'd be drowning in choice!
So Wheeler googled "ISP outrage", clicked the "News" tab, and had an intern write a feel-good do-nothing speech about the Comcast outrage?
If it were anyone we could at least momentarily pretend that this was an opening salvo in some course of action that would increase incentives to switch by doing something to promote competition to act against the disincentives Comcast forces on the consumer.
No, no, this is all about draining the political pressure that news story like the Comcast outrage foment. Its about constituents having the illusion of progress and/or representatives being able to tell their constituents that Chairman Wheeler, notable industry shill, is on the case.
FCC guy seems to think there is enough competition in enough of the US to make switching a thing that might actually happen.
Switching requires two different providers. Most people can only get DSL over a phone line because cable companies do not cover most of the country. Where I live in Seattle, Comcast only provides service to about 1/3 of the neighborhood despite it being less than a mile from the center of downtown. In order for it to be difficult to switch, you must have the ability to switch. That is the logic problem with Wheeler's statement that makes it just dumb. It's either that or a bold-face lie because he is trying to push the lie that we have a choice. So, is he stupid or a liar?
I've had Comcast cable since it was Cablevision (then MediaOne, then AT&T), and it has been pretty much trouble free, except when they try to reconfigure their network. I find their internet acceptable but would never rely on their telephone service(friends in town have had month-long outages when amplifiers on their trunk line fail and there's no one competent to troubleshoot the problem) .
Here's our daily dose of bullsh*t from the FCC.
Yes, seriously.
For a great many people, "switching ISPs" basically means moving. Because if you're lucky, you've got an option of DSL or cable, with DSL being effectively useless for anything but simple web browsing and email.
This is why we need true net neutrality—which means separating the medium from the message. Force the people who own the lines to at least lease them to anyone who asks, basically at cost...or, even better, break up the companies that own the lines so that that's all they do, and all the other services are part of a separate company.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Email.
Yes, Email. They used the Email address they got from their provider for ... well, everything. Mostly because it's the only Email address they ever had. Now their Amazon, their Facebook, their Twitter, their Steam, and a billion other accounts are all tied to that one email address. Most of these could be redirected. But what if you forget one? How are you going to convince a company that doesn't give half a shit about you in the first place that you're not someone trying to gain access to an account that isn't yours?
You can easily and legally forward your physical mail. But there ain't no law that forces providers to offer that service. And why the hell should they, after all it ties you to them!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This weasely SOB says it's too hard to switch ISPs, when it's his own damn fault it's so hard. It's always going to be hard to switch when there are only two choices.
And he could make it a lot easier to switch if he'd just take the industry's dick out of his mouth for a second and stop the attacks on Net Neutrality. Maybe get with the Justice Department and talk about how to break up Comcast and AT&T.
I can't stand Wheeler. He's a symptom of the Obama administrations absolute failure. That he got appointed chairman of the FCC is just a joke. Guy's a former cable industry executive for chrissake. He's the last person who should be in charge of the FCC.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Assuming you have an option to switch ISPs (and I realize that many of you don't), it's actually pretty easy to do, even with leaving Comcast. This is really just an order of operations issue. Most people will decide they want to switch, call up their incumbent ISP to cancel their service, and then order their new service. Seems logical, but for best results, flip it around. Once you have decided to switch to the other guy, call the other guy first. The other guy will then set up your account, come to your house and do all of the installation, port your phone number over (if applicable) and then once you have verified that the service is working to your satisfaction, you call up the incumbent and tell them to cancel. This is how I switched from Comcast to Verizon a few years ago. Granted, I still dealt with an extremely defensive (anti)cancellation person on the phone, but it was a much more straightforward conversation. It went something like this...
Me: Hi. I switched to Verizon, cancel my service
Comcast: Why do you want to cancel?
Me: Your service doesn't work, I've had a tech out here 3 times and they didn't fix the issue. Fios has already been ordered and installed and it is working, which is something I could never have said for you.
Comcast: defensive statement...yada yada..Verizon installed a new wire to your house, that's why it's fixed
Me: Yeah, maybe you should have tried that on one of your 3 service calls, but you didn't. Anyway. I 'm not going to argue with you. I'm already receiving Verizon services, Comacast services have been physically disconnected. Cancel my account.
Comcast: Fine. Done.
And that was it. Hell I could have kept it even briefer if I had been prepared for such a defensive attitude, but even still, since you have physically disconnected their service and are already paying for their competitor, you know they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting you to agree to sending another tech over to re-connect Comcast and then go and cancel Verizon.
Now if you are not planning on switching, but want to pay less, or want better service, I use their anti-cancellation policy against them. The first level CSRs have limited power to do anything like offer discounts, upgrade service for free, etc. They can do some, but that is child's play compared to your cancellation people. What you do is if you don't work something out with the first level, tell them you want to cancel. You don't have to actually mean it, you just have to make them think you mean it. Even if there are no good alternatives ("I'll switch to satellite and DSL. I don't really need all of your bandwidth" or "My 4G hotspot works fine for me"). Sounds ridiculous, but you need to commit to the role. They will then transfer you to the cancellation people. Their job on paper is to shut off your service and close your account, but as we have seen in the news recently, their actual job is to do anything they can to prevent you doing that. If you get here, you are golden. Walk right into their trap: "Why do you want to cancel?" "I'm sorry to hear that, you must be very frustrated. What if I were to offer you x y z? Would that change your mind?" Checkmate.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
and it was left ut of the summary.
"At 25 Mbps, there is simply no competitive choice for most Americans. Stop and let that sink inthree-quarters of American homes have no competitive choice for the essential infrastructure for 21st century economics and democracy. Included in that is almost 20 percent who have no service at all!
Things only get worse as you move to 50 Mbps where 82 percent of consumers lack a choice."
So he recognizes a problem, wants people to have access to faster broadband, want's congress to do something, but most of you people just spew hate
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This will be relevant to much of the country maybe by 2025... or never if Mr. FCC is the one driving change. There is no other option. It's wired cable connection through 1 company for reliable, high speed service. The "second" options are either snail pace DSL (if it's even comparable with dial up) or a mobile hotspot device through a wireless carrier. The wireless device actually makes more sense but both are pitifully slow and unreliable.
He who forgets will be destined to remember. - EV
I miss being able to plug a modem into any phone line and have internet access. Cable and DSL just destroyed that freedom of mobility (and we all accepted it, in exchange for Mbps bandwidth instead of Kbps bandwidth). Wifi kinda brought it back but its all locked down in Terms and Conditions away from any rights conveyed as a result of the lines being covered by common carrier rules.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Had a relative die and called. Canceling went smoothly right up to the "Please put him on the line to verify the cancellation..."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
LOL uh no zippy, if broadband was classified as common carriage FCC would be able to regulate and we'd have competition. As such it is not. I'm not sure WTF you mean by WiFi. WiFi is nothing more than an access point. It's not the pipe that connects you to the internet, like fiber or cable. So where WiFi is available somebody is using an ISP to connect you to the internet either via cable or fiber. If you are talking cellular like 4G, that's not wifi, and vastly worse.
The answer is for broadband Internet to be a non-profit public utility, billed to the customer at actual cost, caped at $39.95 a month for 50MB upload and download speed with no data caps.
Then perhaps the FCC will go up against the monopolies trying to stop municipalities from building their own broadband systems.
For years, I had all email for my vanity domain forwarded to my gmail account, and gmail lets you send email out with the Reply-to header set as your vanity domain. It was only when I wanted some more advanced capabilities of Google Apps did I suck it up and start spending the $50/yr/user to fully port my domain over.
2.58 million people are still paying AOL for their email address. It sounds like you have a very biased circle. Looking through my contact list, I see several family and friends with optimum, comcast, and verizon email addresses.
This guy is an ass, he lies, he spouts propaganda, he is a shill for the very people destroying the Internet.
My feelings on the matter is there is no FCC, it doesn't exist as anything but a title, they are toothless, and they want it that way.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This is yet another example of why your local telecom (or cable) company should not be an ISP. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc. should provide you with wires that connect you to your ISP of choice. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc. should not even offer public email accounts.
I wouldn't consider 25Mbps essential. 5Mbps at a decent price would satisfy most users. Even that is almost impossible to come by anywhere in the US.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It's not hard to switch home ISP's; sorry, it just isn't. Try changing service providers for a midsize business. It takes me, on average, ninety days to get an Ethernet circuit delivered to one of my customers. This is regular, business-grade fiber Ethernet from major players like AT&T and Cogent. It's a non-stop uphill battle to establish services. This is because the engineer wants something the outside plant people don't like, the provisioning team never requested the address space, the splice case is in a manhole under three feet of snow and the field techs won't dig (for real), the install tech wasn't dispatched with the right equipment, or whatever... It never goes smoothly, and the circuits are rarely delivered on time. It is a hair-pulling nightmare to switch service providers, and that's aside from all of the internal network stuff that needs to be done. A savings of $300-400 per month on a $2,500/mo circuit is hardly worth it given the lead time and hassle. Switching from DSL to cable at your house is too hard because you're stuck dealing with terms you agreed to? Sorry, look elsewhere for pity.
Logged in to say this, but see you already got to it. This monopoly crap is what needs to be fixed. Right now, I would gladly take a difficult (and expensive) to terminate service over the choice I have now: Take Comcast or take nothing reasonable (satellite? Riiight...)
We need someone to bust up these monopolies and let other companies in to compete. This "we are locking in this neighborhood" crap has got to stop and I think it's the biggest hurdle to any sort of competitive broadband in this country (compared to other countries).
I'm not sure if "Comacast" was intentional or a typo, but I'm stealing that.
I still access to my bellsouth.net and aol.com email address and I haven't been with AT&T or AOL for years. If an ISP holds your e-mail access contingent upon subscription then they are quite shady and something should be done.
ISPs want to reduce churn, obviously, every business does. Problem is they don't do so in the correct way, they gimmick they're way to avoid customer churn by making it hard to leave, rather than easy to stay. If my ISP wants my undying loyalty they only need to provide what I purchased: unlimited broadband internet at the speed I pay a large monthly fee for, and a minimum of service interruptions would be nice too. Since no ISP I know has ever delivered that to customers, the ones that do get my business.
All I'm doing is waiting for a fiber rollout in my city.
Left satisfied.
"At 25 Mbps, there is simply no competitive choice for most Americans. Stop and let that sink inthree-quarters of American homes have no competitive choice for the essential infrastructure for 21st century economics and democracy. Included in that is almost 20 percent who have no service at all!
Things only get worse as you move to 50 Mbps where 82 percent of consumers lack a choice."
TRANSLATION: Congress must provide corporate welfare again so that Americans can expect (but not receive) this level of service.
If you don't enjoy dealing with Retentions muppets, it's much easier to terminate a service in writing (or in the case of telephone service, by porting your number to a new provider). Check your terms and conditions for the official way to terminate, and you'll find the address there. Write them a letter and be done with it. There's no one to argue with you, that way.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Just as the brief says, it's usually a monopoly in the area. For broadband service it's not hard for me to switch, it's impossible. There is no one else to switch to.