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BellSouth DSL Savings May Be Just a Line | 19 comments (19 topical) | Post A Comment
Long-extant problem[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#10)
by CowboyinBRLA on Tue Oct 10, 2006 at 02:45:38 PM PDT

This has been a long-extant problem in the telecommunications world, as the telcos fought to protect their local service turf. Public companies want to grow, to boost their stock price for the benefit of the stockholders (or at least the ones with millions in options). Problem is, people are abandoning land lines in droves, moving to cellular. (Naturally, the telcos are buying up cell companies in response). In addition, the cable companies and telcos used to have a sort of unwritten agreement that cable wouldn't try hard to market phone service if the telcos wouldn't try to break into TV. Now cable has the infrastructure to offer decent and cheap phone service, and it's going all out, but the telco networks can't handle TV without major upgrades. Meanwhile, the telcos have to protect their leased data line business, and a lot of companies are discovering paying $1500 a month for a T1 is silly when you can get symmetrical 6MB cable for a quarter of that, or asymmetrical even cheaper. I've had IDSL, ADSL, and SDSL in the past, and none of them offered anywhere near the quality or stability of my home cable connection, much less my office's cable-managed fiber optic connection. The telcos are trying to squeeze every last dime out of their dying networks before they're worthless, instead of spending the money to upgrade them to a competitive level. I say screw 'em.

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Telecom == no service[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#11)
by Anonymous User on Tue Oct 10, 2006 at 05:54:21 PM PDT

It's pretty widespread. The customer service in the telecom industry is about at rock bottom. I moved into a new house and Comcast couldn't get their internet service working at better than 2 mbps (when they claim 6) after sending out eight techs. I chatted with them, and apparently, most are subcontracted and paid per job. So, they have (a) no incentive to do it right, since another call back means another $40 and (b) can't really fix anything outside ones house. We had techs show up to check the outside (comcast employees) who had no idea why they were there and left without doing anything. Did I mention the 30 minute hold times, even for the techs? (Again, paid by the job, so time != money for comcast here.) We went with Verizon FIOS, which has been working, but when I called their customer service (in India), they obviously have no clue. They have their script, and nothing else can be done. The service works, but they claim I have to pay for a replacement battery if I want my phone to work in the event of a power failure. (In small print, they switch your phone to fiber whether you want it or not if you get FIOS.) On the phone side, they mis-represented features (i.e. they have no idea what their own services are.) They also set our outgoing caller ID to some other person, and it turns out, they sold them the same number. Too bad for them, we go it (and their calls!) Cingular (cell phone), in addition to lots of calls that just don't go through, there is the uttely clueless tech support and sales people. They sold me a blackberry WITHOUT data service! What can you do with that? Just use the phone, a very expensive phone. My outgoing caller ID is still wrong, and signal quality is much worse than my wife's Verizon.

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FIOS[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#12)
by Anonymous User on Wed Oct 11, 2006 at 08:42:01 AM PDT

(In small print, they switch your phone to fiber whether you want it or not if you get FIOS.)

Umm. the F in FIOS does mean Fiber, you know. Here in Massachusetts, all their promo material has said that all traffic is carried over fiber to the home. I'm not thrilled with having to replace the battery on a periodic basis, but I don't expect to need to do it for some time.

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Customer swervice[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#14)
by Anonymous User on Sat Oct 14, 2006 at 11:15:47 PM PDT

"The customer service in the telecom industry is about at rock bottom."

The customer service in the entire IT industry is at rock bottom.

No, wait ... the customer service in the entire industrial sector is at rock bottom. And the service sector is following its lead...

[ Parent | Reply to This ]



BellSouth DSL Savings May Be Just a Line | 19 comments (19 topical) | Post A Comment
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