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MS and AOL Interested in MediaOne
Megaweapon writes "As a MediaOne customer (who is without cable modem access), this scares the scat out of me. First Comcast, then AT&T, now these two. "
I hate MediaOne. I'm moving (all next week, so be gentle
on the email!) and the 23 best things about moving are
1. No rats 2. No leaky ceiling 3. No more MediaOne- I'll actually
be able to get a few channels I want. Oh well, watch
the amazing expanding empire.
Well, you'll get your AT&T wish one way or the other. TCI and MediaOne are swapping some properties with the end result that all MediaOne territory in Chicago is going to become TCI (now AT&T).
TCI doesn't force customers to buy it's cable modem service, but if you do, it has to be through the TCI @Home venture. There is only one choice of ISP for the line. If you want AOL's content on top of it, then you have to pay extra to AOL. TCI says it paid for the cables and shouldn't have to share them with other people who are only interested in piggybacking on TCI's investment. AOL wanted to force TCI to unbundle their wires from their ISP business and allow any ISP to offer service over the wires (with the payment of some fee to TCI surely). They wanted this to be a condition of the TCI/AT&T merger. The FCC did not agree to this however.
Now if AOL were to buy MediaOne, the shoe would be on the other foot. They could lock anyone who wanted cable modems into buying them from AOL. That's why I'm saying they would quickly change their tune on open access to the cable lines.
BTW: Phone companies are required to unbundle their network elements such as the copper loop to a customer's house and sell them to all comers at a discount. AOL wanted the same provisions to apply to cable.
When AT&T bought TCI, AOL claimed that AT&T should have to open up TCI's cable to all ISP's who wanted to provide access. Think AOL will be making the same argument if they are able to buy MediaOne? Not! It would be funny to watch them do a 180 though.
Hello, I have Mediaone currently. I had mediaone for cable for about 1 year and for the past 2 I have had their internet service. First let me say this: 1) Their cable service is good ( at least in my area ) ;) ..I said my HOSTNAME...the person on the line says...ok hold I'll transfer you....
...the very machine it is workign with now.. :(
...and they do regular port scans and login attempts to make sure people have their machines secured. ...because I'm sure I'll get a call from someone asking why I downloaded 100 megs in the last day .......
2) They don't screw up billing ( much )
3) I get about 90 channels where I live ( New Hampshire ) so I'm doing ok
Now lets talk about their internet access:
First I was told that I would have their internet access about a year before I really did...which was fine because delays happen.
But the real problems didn't start until i actually got hooked up.
The first thing I noticed is that its not as fast as they claim...no problem going from 3k/s to 150k/s works for me...no no REALLY it REALLY works for me
What does annoy me is that nobody at Mediaone seems to know how to run a DHCP server. I'm always getting disconnected and when I look at my logs I see that my address is already in use...how wonderful....well stuff happens right? So you/me call support...where you are on hold for 2-3 hours sometimes how very very nice..when you finally get through you are usually speaking to a HS dropout? I'm not sure if that is actually the case but it MUST be. Once I called and I told them that my hostname wasn't resolving anymore. They said " A what?"
They transfer me to the Cable TV department...after explaining to the guy what happened he transfers me back to the internet dept. where I explain what happened and that my hostname no longer resolves...they say "A what?" I say my HOSTNAME...they say hold I'll transfer you....
I get transfered to Sales at this point I think I was on the line for 2.5 hours including the hold time...
I explain what is happening and they transfer me back to internet...
I say to the guy on the line
"Before you say anything or transfer me answer me this...do you know what a HOSTNAME is?"
His reply was "no"
I say "let me talk to your boss"
I speak with the boss and he says that "Mediaone doesn't deal with hostnames"
I asked for his boss ( I don't know if that is who I got )
The next person tells me that it has been taken care of and everything should be all set.
I check my machine and sure enough it was fine.
----
The following is just a sample of the crap I get from that company all the time.
----
Another time I called and after being on hold ( NO JOKE ) for 3 hours they guy on the other line tells me that my internet isn't working because I have linux and linux is very buggy and unsupported by Mediaone. I told him that the error was "......address is already in use" I say "You are having a problem with your DHCP server" He says there is nothing he can do for me. So I waited for a day until they got their heads out of their asses and fixed. I renewed my lease and on went life.... They don't care about their customers at all...I have more stories...like the time I moved and when the tech came out and saw that my linux box was a 486 SX/25 he told my G/F that he wasn't going to install it because it "it just wouldn't work on such an old machine"
I had to wait for another month before it was installed
Oh and this is the best one....they try to log into my machine through telnet and my machine banned them...when I called to ask wtf was happening they said they were just protecting me
Maybe some mediaone users have seen it cpusage.mediaone.net
haha and when you try to log into that machine it says that any further attempts will be procecuted! --------------
Well those are my reasons why Mediaone sucks...they don't care about customer service on the internet side because there is no competiton. I hope someone DOES buy them and cleans up the mess that they call Service. I just hope it isn't MS
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
I'm not a fan of regulation, but I think even less of POOR regulation.
The reality is we have a few cable companies who DO NOT COMPETE with each other. Instead, they sit tight on their asses and continually charge just a little more than the national average in an always upward cycle.
Why aren't these titans competing with each other? Because we don't raise awareness locally, that Town/City Hall is sometimes BY CHOICE granting "exclusivity" to the local franchise, usually over expensive dinner paid for by same company. Why risk a good thing by trying to "invade" someone else's turf.
I could care less if we had just 3 or 4 cable companies, as long as they were coast to coast and I could choose between them all, like I do with long distance carriers. How can ANYONE - besides the cable companies - actually LIKE the way things are today? If you hate all forms or regulation, there's enough red tape to irrate you... BUT, if you favor regulation to protect the consumer, what we have is not enough since it's obvious the prices of cable rise FASTER than inflation or in other words they are sticking it to us.
I'd just like to see the whole thing go away. We HAVE the Internet - give me an international video file server that streams TV quality video faster than I can download it... and the American-style cable companies can go to hell. Why can't someone just step in and serve the pent-up demand.. or is Hollywood going to say it's none of their business until we're all downloading their latest products, free, on Internet Relay Chat??
Feh... can anyone think of an industry where everyone to a greater extend hates all available choices? I'm glad it's Friday.
despite their cult-like slogan
"this is the way", it's really the best option in the Greater Boston area (Mass.) since none of the other providers offer cable modems right now. Unless you count RCN, and the 2 or 3 customers that they've actually deigned to wire up. The providers in other locales (Cablevision in Boston, Time Warner on the north suburbs) will just laugh at you if you ask them about timeframe for internet access. So don't know MediaOne so fast. Unless AO-Hell buys them, then I'll agree with you.
1) They suck big time
I've had pretty good luck with them so far. The initial setup went very quickly, and I've had very few problems with it. I run it through a Linux (P90) firewall to my apartment's lan, and it works great.
Especially Q3Test on my G3/400... [g]
2) Don't let them touch your computer
Of course not. Get your roommate's iMac and let them set it up on that, then call up and have the MAC addr changed. Or boot into windoze for the install. The techs are (probably wisely) phobic about Linux boxen. (i.e., there's a lot of possibly hard configuring to do given all the random distributions of Linux there are [or have been at one time on that poor P90])
4) Good luck getting your service back on-line in a timely fashion.
They did a good job here too; when the cable modem died (of course I rent it), they came in about a day or two, and had a new one hooked up pretty quickly. Yes, it was a couple phone calls to juggle the MAC addr, but they were perfectly able to do the job.
I was fairly amused when the guy who did the original install showed up with some buddies to harass^H^H^H^H^H^Help the guy who was diagnosing the modem, but whatever.
Of course, I'm probably about to get an unplesantly large shaft when I move apartments... anyone know what moving the service costs these days?
On another issue, NO I DON'T WATCH TV! Why do you oppress my bank account by making me pay for TV programming when I don't own a freaken TV!
Huh? I'm not paying for any cable TV with my modem, AFAIK...
Peace,
Well, I'm not really sure about MediaOne, as they don't offer cable in my area, however I must say that I am extremely disappointed in Shaw @Home (Red Deer, Alberta, Canada). Yesterday I received a long e-mail from one of their system engineers (an mcse at that), explaining how because I was running Linux, and had sendmail and a web server running, (i do internal CGI testing with it, and dont use either for external traffic), and because Linux is insecure, I had 14 days to remove all my server processes and "secure my system".
Previous to this, I had logged about 200k of portscans coming from the Shaw office in Calgary, Alberta, and had firewalled the address that they were coming from. After being put on technical support for about 8 hours, (approximately), I finally got to speak to a technician, who then told me that I had been placed on the abuse list, and it was doubtful whether I would ever get my cable access back.
I then followed up the e-mail I got from the MCSE with a lengthy reply explaining my position, and the fact that I kind of know whether or not my box is secure (I am a UNIX sysadmin for an ISP), and am still waiting for his reply. This has frustrated me immensely, and I am at the end of my rope. Unfortunately, Shaw @Home is the fastest Internet around, and I don't know if I could go back to modem. (Although its free). Anyways, that's my rant of the day.