I dont advertise for anyone unless they're willing to pay me. Hence, if I am given the choice between something with a brand name on it and without, I tend to pick the thing without.
Now if they want to pay me for it...I'll consider it...
Oops -- mistake in my last paragraph. The monopoly company should be the keeper of the copper. The dialtone provider would be a normal competitive company...
I work at a small company that produces switches to do DSL/Phone service. I've been intimately involved with phone companies and I can vouch for the fact that they have their heads up their collective asses.
I also got an SDSL line installed earlier this year. It was a nightmare getting it installed, but it's been pretty reliable since (now that Bellsouth doesnt have much to do with it).
The REAL problem with the DSL system these days is the way that congress deregulated the local phone system in '96.
Phone systems and the like are what we call "natural monopolies". You dont want a dozen different companies stringing up lines on poles (would be messy and expensive -- poles only have so much space on 'em, etc.).
Congress basically didn't understand much about how the phone system worked, so they stated "Yea verily there shalt be competition for local phone service. Phone companies must lease out their lines for a reasonable cost." They then handed the ball to the FCC to have them decide the rules and what "reasonable cost" means.
Once the rules came out, the baby bells cried foul and took it to court (GTE was first I think), saying they couldnt make a profit on it.
This is why DSL has been so slow in coming. The bells have little interest in selling DSL services -- they'd like to keep everyone buying second phone lines and T1's for as long as possible, since they can charge more money for them, and dont have to upgrade their plant (my company faces this problem daily).
Thus we have a situation where the customers of the baby bells (flashcom, covad, et al), are also their competitors. Unsuprisingly, the service that Covad and others get is crappy.
I believe Covad has a standing lawsuit at the moment against several of the Bell's charging them with putting the most incompetent engineers on the DSL teams. I can corroborate this story, since it took around a dozen trips for them to get the line set up for my SDSL line (mostly stupid errors by the linemen).
Indeed they had to run a new pair of wires back to the switch from my house. You _can_ (technically) piggyback an SDSL signal on an existing voice line, but Bellsouth currently won't allow that. Covad has another lawsuit against them for this policy as well. There's no reason for it, other than to slow down the proliferation of DSL.
I think it would have been better to break up the baby bells further. Make one company that maintains the copper up to the switch, and a monopoly company that provides dialtone and DSL services. Then DSL providers wouldnt have to attempt to get decent service from someone who is essentially a competitor.
Slashdot Mirror
I dont advertise for anyone unless they're willing to pay me. Hence, if I am given the choice between something with a brand name on it and without, I tend to pick the thing without.
Now if they want to pay me for it...I'll consider it...
Tommy Hilfiger can blow me...
-- Jeff
Oops -- mistake in my last paragraph. The monopoly company should be the keeper of the copper. The dialtone provider would be a normal competitive company...
I work at a small company that produces switches to do DSL/Phone service. I've been intimately involved with phone companies and I can vouch for the fact that they have their heads up their collective asses.
I also got an SDSL line installed earlier this year. It was a nightmare getting it installed, but it's been pretty reliable since (now that Bellsouth doesnt have much to do with it).
The REAL problem with the DSL system these days is the way that congress deregulated the local phone system in '96.
Phone systems and the like are what we call "natural monopolies". You dont want a dozen different companies stringing up lines on poles (would be messy and expensive -- poles only have so much space on 'em, etc.).
Congress basically didn't understand much about how the phone system worked, so they stated "Yea verily there shalt be competition for local phone service. Phone companies must lease out their lines for a reasonable cost." They then handed the ball to the FCC to have them decide the rules and what "reasonable cost" means.
Once the rules came out, the baby bells cried foul and took it to court (GTE was first I think), saying they couldnt make a profit on it.
This is why DSL has been so slow in coming. The bells have little interest in selling DSL services -- they'd like to keep everyone buying second phone lines and T1's for as long as possible, since they can charge more money for them, and dont have to upgrade their plant (my company faces this problem daily).
Thus we have a situation where the customers of the baby bells (flashcom, covad, et al), are also their competitors. Unsuprisingly, the service that Covad and others get is crappy.
I believe Covad has a standing lawsuit at the moment against several of the Bell's charging them with putting the most incompetent engineers on the DSL teams. I can corroborate this story, since it took around a dozen trips for them to get the line set up for my SDSL line (mostly stupid errors by the linemen).
Indeed they had to run a new pair of wires back to the switch from my house. You _can_ (technically) piggyback an SDSL signal on an existing voice line, but Bellsouth currently won't allow that. Covad has another lawsuit against them for this policy as well. There's no reason for it, other than to slow down the proliferation of DSL.
I think it would have been better to break up the baby bells further. Make one company that maintains the copper up to the switch, and a monopoly company that provides dialtone and DSL services. Then DSL providers wouldnt have to attempt to get decent service from someone who is essentially a competitor.
Apparently currents.net doesnt trust NT for this job, eh?
>telnet www.currents.net 80
Trying 209.144.168.10...
Connected to www.currents.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 18:09:36 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) mod_oas/4.64 PHP/3.0.12
Content-Type: text/html
Age: 0
X-Cache: MISS from octopus