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Covad Faked DSL Trouble For Verizon? 172

Posted by CmdrTaco from the dos-at-a-corporate-level dept.
An anonymous reader sent us the strangest thing I've read in awhile. It's a Press Release on Verizon's website claiming that Covad employees were pressured into submitting thousands of fake bug reports, and costed the DSL Provider millions in tech support. 22,000 bug reports and sworn statements by covad employees, it effectively looks like a Denial of Service attack at a corporate level. I have to admit that I find this pretty funny.
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Covad Faked DSL Trouble For Verizon? More

Covad Faked DSL Trouble For Verizon?

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  • Re:Furthermore (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmmm, who's a Final Fantasy fan?

  • Re: Catholics... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Please foward me your email address so i can put you on every conceivable spam list. Thank you, have a nice day, you Catholic piece of shit :)

  • Costed (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:34AM (#155699)
    submitting thousands of fake bug reports, and costed the DSL Provider

    Yes, I hate it when things costed me lots of money, too!

  • Costed? (Score:2)

    by davie ( 191 )
    ...and costed the DSL Provider millions in tech support.

    Jesus, Taco, have an adult proofread before you post.

  • I think you'll find people in Hollywood are thinking of snorting cocaine of nekkid prostitutes.

    ...j
  • That is a good thing to keep an eye out for. Good thought- in fact, I'm not sure if you could even consider that illegal. OSS _invites_ interaction, that's the point. You'd have to draw a line between malice and incompetence, which I think is a lot trickier than drawing a line between proprietary and publically available.

    Possible counterattack would be that any such action could be seen as proof that 'wreckers' are actively working with OSS code- and therefore capable of violating the license agreements and stealing code for proprietary purposes. One of the most important defenses against this has been existing policies at many companies that employees are NOT ALLOWED to look at OSS code for fear of just such accusations.

  • ...if the situation were reversed? Bad acts are not funny. If Verizon had deluged Covad with spam bug reports, you'd be all over them. Face facts, guys, this was wrong. I might not think much of Verizon either, but the place to win these wars is in the marketplace, by providing better products at better prices. I do hope they settle out of court; I'd hate to see a giant judgment sink Covad.

  • Taking the press release at face value is probably not a good idea either.

  • hah (Score:2)

    by Danse ( 1026 )

    Gotta prove something before you can get anything done about it. The offenses would have to get much much worse before anything could be done about them I think. It would just be too hard to build a case against them. They would claim that people make mistakes sometimes and that there's nothing they can do about that. They'll just say that when they find a problem they try to fix it as soon as possible. Just try to prove otherwise. You can't.

  • ...this story was submitted 22,000 times.
    - Cmdr Taco

  • Come on out, Jon! (Score:4)

    by Kostya ( 1146 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:46AM (#155707) Homepage Journal
    The balance of power in our nation is leaning disturbingly far in the direction of the faceless corporation, and we must do something to stop this threat. In my vision of the future, wars are fought, not by two countries governments, but by two corporations, struggling for power.

    Alright Jon, you can come out now! Why hide behind an almost anonymous username when such rhetoric clearly identifies you as the, one an only, JonKatz! I mean, if it isn't bad enough that you mention corporatism or Corporate Republic 20 times in every article you write, now you are trolling as "real people" who agree with you! Shame!

    :-)

  • Noone would have to, their software is so buggy that it generates plenty of its own.
    Secret windows code
  • Funny enough, it is seen as a Troll by people who reply to it, but I hope that "insightful" will not prove to have been the better description for this post...
    We shall see.

  • How did they know? (Score:3)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @06:56AM (#155710)
    How exactly would any of the RBOC's know that a trouble report was bogus? Given the level of attention that they give to most trouble calls, particularly when a competitor is involved.

    sPh

  • So? (Score:3)

    by swingkid ( 3585 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:32AM (#155711)
    Is this their way of trying to excuse HORRIBLE service in the first place? Take a look at dslreports.com and tell me all those horror stories are fake.
  • I ordered a DSL line through Speakeasy (a Covad reseller) on the 25th of May. End result: June 9th, I was up and running. Would have been up 2 days sooner, but Verizon took a couple of days to notify Speakeasy/Covad that their part of the job was done.

    I don't consider 2 days unreasonable - especially after reading some of the horror stories at DSLReports.com. If Covad was holding off in order to make Verizon look bad - it didn't do much in this case.

    In any case, I've only had to call Covad once (to cancel the "Professional Install" after I'd hooked the filters and modem up myself) - and the reps I spoke to were polite and prompt - within an hour, Speakeasy had been notified (by them) that the line was installed and working, and the "Professional Install" had been cancelled. SInce their tech visit was cancelled, I can't personally speak of their techs competence.

    The whole thing was about as quick and painless as I could ask for. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones =)

  • not to mention that Verizon is the wire provider, Covad was the one actually providing the dsl service
  • As silly as this sounds, ellem is abosolutely correct.
  • I'm a Covad (and therefore C&P or Bell Atlantic or Verizon or whatever they change their name to next) customer in the Maryland DC suburbs. My DSL line alone probably makes up a significant portion of those bug reports. Between the repeated Verizon no-shows at installation time (which I had to leave work for); to periodic downtime for a few hours; to sudden loss of service which required Covad to drop the bitrate to get back on the air. Verizon's solution: 'Duh, Idunno." I wish I had an alternative to telephone company involvement...

  • Another interpretation... (Score:4)

    by John Fulmer ( 5840 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @06:23AM (#155716)
    Of course this is a pretty one-sided article... from Verison's side.

    If played the middle man in this type of situation before. You need to get the circuit up for the customer ASAP, and it isn't usually obvious where the problem is. It's been my experience that if a circuit (DSL, T1, Frame-Relay, whatever) doesn't come up, the first thing to do is open a trouble ticket with the telco. Sure it may be routing problem (which would be a provider, ie. Covad problem), but telco's usually take so long to work on trouble tickets, you HAVE to open a ticket up immediately just in case it is a telco problem.

    I see this as Verison slapping Covad (who is actually a competitor) with a lawsuit for just doing business. Probably no conspiracy at all.

    jf
  • soon after posting this message my DSL went down. Came back up a few hours later. The Verizon tech guy comes to the door to tell me that they have switched me to a new shelf (a T1 is feeding it and not any other shelves).

    It stopped the problem from happening every 10s but it still happens probably once in 30 hops...

    I guess calling them for several straight months causes something to be eventually done. I don't know if it is adequate but at least it is something.

  • Verizon and their tech support. (Score:3)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @07:03AM (#155718)
    I have no respect for Verizon. They have known about overselling their bandwith for months (6) yet they refuse to do anything about it. I have gotten to the point where I just call their billing dept and get my money back. I will NOT accept ping spikes over 1000 every 10s.

    Their excuse is that they keep putting people in charge of upgrading the system and nothing gets done (always blame someone else apparently).

    Perhaps b/c of all these "false" bug reports they are too bogged down but I doubt that is the case in many areas. I personally cannot wait for Road Runner. I would rather deal w/that (cheaper, faster, and probably less problems) than the 1000+ ping responses and poor tech support.
  • admit it and don't claim expertise makes all the difference. A TRULY wise man realizes there is more he doesn't know that that which he does know.
  • "Right. Now lis'sen, it's 9 AM I want'cha ta do the 5 Verizon jobs and then meet us at the bar on 10th and 2nd by 11. Hey we're fucking union what're they gonna do; fire us?"

    Um. Verizon's broadband engineering staff isn't unionized, unless it just happened. It's one of the things that led to the strike during the BA-GTE merger last year. BA was mostly a union shop except in broadband. GTE's operations, being largely in the midwest, are mostly nonunion and GTE had a nasty history of swooping down on would-be unionizers and downsizing their departments. One result of the strike settlement is that the broadband people get to vote on unionizing and Verizon doesn't ship too many of the operations to GTE facilities in the midwest.

    No, Verizon's DSL operation is many things: disorganized, inept, overworked, oversubscribed and unresponsive. But it wasn't a union shop during the period covered in the class-action suit against them.

    Now back to you. Are you so nastily antiunion because you sit on a lot of corporate boards and own a lot of stock in companies that stand to lose cheap labor to union drives? Or are you (A) privileged enough to never have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck, or (B) a self-loathing workaholic who likes carrying a beeper 24/7 and never going on vacation?
  • All it takes is a union supervisor telling his union lackeys that Covad & other non telco companies threaten their jobs and to remember that when they install the lines for COvad to use - I'm sure many would be unusable. You'd be surpised how often stuff like this happens.

    In which case, the natural consiquence of those actions is that their employer is sued, forced to pay millions in damages, and either goes out of business altogether or is forced to operate on a shoestring and struggle back into the black over a period of years.

    There goes any union pay increases and, quite possibly, all those union jobs altogether. Not fair to the stockholder, or those employees who were conscientious in doing their job, but a natural consiquence of sabataging one's own employer by doing deliberately shoddy work or engaging in outright sabatage.

    Any union supervisor with such a narrow view of his economic reality should be fired for his own incompitence, both by his employer and his union rank and file. If this lawsuit accentuates that economic reality, then while I have some sympathy for the stockholders, I find the overall result to be a positive one.

    Regardless of whether or not the direction for this came from upper management or some utterly stupid and foolish union boss, the bottom line is that the company is resposible for its employees' actions while on the job, and if those employees are engaging in sabatage, can and should be required to pay appropriate damages.

    Frankly, unemployed union memebers who get that way for actions like you describe are, in my humble but very correct opinion, disserving of exactly what they got.

    The same goes for the other side, of course. If Covad did submit fake bug reports (rather than submitting actual reports for deliberately shoddy Verizon work), then the natural consiquence of having one's employees engage in such activity will be for Covad to pay through the nose. One can only hope that the judicial system will sort the facts out properly (which, while an iffy proposition, is certainly more likely than getting the truth directly from either corporation or their respective unions).
  • > the fact that it took them a month to come back and fix it was unforgivable

    Not that I think much of Verizon (I actually hate them), but perhaps it took them so long to get to you because they were busy following up on the other 199 tickets that Covad issued (yours and one other being the only true problem).

    From the Verizon declarations of Covad employees:

    "At one point, I prepared a summary [of trouble tickets that showed] only approximately 2 of the 200 tickets involved genuine ILEC problems."
  • How come people seem to be suprised that an ILEC is trying to shoot down a competitor by whatever means necessary? They were required to open up their offices for outside companies to come in and hook up DSLAMs. If your boss told you one day that your competitors were going to be renting office space from your company whilst trying to undecut you. Yeah that's going to go over really well. I think reality is finally catching up with the DSL. Growth was rampant as long as companies could fudge numbers and only keep books with a 3 year outlook. Now the DSL .coms have to live with the reality of ILEC, a very unprofitable reality. The ones holding the lines (pun intended) at the end will be the winners while everyone else, including customers, will be the losers.
  • So how do Verizon Employees stack up against /. editors?

    --
  • I have already come to this conclusion after reading Verizons comments and then the countless complaints by your costummers and Verizon costummers as posted on Slashdot.

    It seems Verizon is incompatent in the FUD department as well.
  • 22,000 appointments where Verizon techs simply didn't show up.
  • One thing to keep in mind in fights like these, as pathetic as they are, is that companies are groups of people (and groups, of groups), not monolithic lockstep entities.

    How much of this lawsuit (and the other lawsuits in this miess) are really representative of the companies/for the good of the companies/whatever? How much are some executive seeing dollar signs, some unhappy middle-manager seeking revenge, some group with lousy data making a stupid decision, a paranoid marketing manager, etc.

    Of course this and related actions seem stupid because they are. The average company has all the grace and finesse of a drunken elephant. It's hard to find a "bad guy" or "good guy" because companies are made up of both.

    What you can find easily is stupidity. There appears to be alot going around in this case.
  • Is that covad employees blamed their problems on Verizon(as their wire provider, not as their dsl provider; covad is the dsl provider).

    Verizon says this was fraudulent, or whatever you want to call it, as they had over 22,000 complaints that were not their problem.

  • I have had no problems with verizon. I signed up for DSL, 3 days later got the kit with modem and line filters, and 2 weeks later when promised i turned everything on and it worked.

    No missed work. (Verizon tech's do know where your box is.. Covad is a moron if they make you stay home).
    Fast service. I always get what i paid for.. havn't had any network downtime. After all i live in the amish capital of the world in a rural new development, so the fact dsl works and is available at all is nice.

    Not only did Verizon get my DSL working but they have setup voicemail, call fowarding and been helpfull on any request i have had. They havn't dropped the ball on anything.

    Now the cable company.. the rip me off at every corner and can screw up an address change royally.

    Like i said, i havn't had any problem. Been using dsl for 4 years now and to tell you the truth i havn't had issues since the days of ISDN with Southwestern bell. (talk about a horrible company).

    Your mileage may vary, but what would you expect from any .com company? Covad is going down just like all the others.. they promised rates and services that couldn't be delivered on time and on budget yet they blame Verizon/Bell Atlantic for there screwups.

    If you really got to know your telco people you would know even though they're union most are very friendly and intelligent people who love there job and been doing it ten years.

    If you live in manhatten or LA you should simply know nobody likes you, so expect the worse :)

  • If the line wasn't marked as dsl it is up for grabs. They only check for tones when they do residential.

    You should have bitched at Covad for not coming out and stealing it back. It was after all provisioned for your usage.

  • Verizon Employees != Mensa Candidates (Score:3)

    by crawling_chaos ( 23007 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:54AM (#155731) Homepage
    I have a DSL circuit through a Covad reseller. The single biggest hurdle to getting it turned on was having Verizon deliver the local loop. It took them 3 tries, and the circuit was delivered 4 weeks after the initial FOC date. It went something like this:
    • Attempt One: I wait at home all day for Verizon (then Hell Atlantic) employee to come by. He shows up at 4:30 and is confused because some of the paperwork says that my line is to be line-shared, and they're not yet letting CLECs sell that service (they hadn't lost the lawsuit yet.) I say I'll call the ISP and go inside to get my cell. He gets in his truck and drives off while my back is turned. He then files the call as "complete" but of course the line won't pass loop test, because the jackass didn't do anything.
    • Attempt the Second: I wait all day for technician who never shows up. He files a report that says he could not locate my residence. Evidently maps are beyond Verizon's ability. They also had a telephone number that I could be reached at, but apparently they've not heard of that newfangled invention, the telephone.
    • Attempt the Third: Was successful. this was good, since Verizon's employees went on strike the next week.

    The Covad tech showed up on time and had me up and running in about an hour. The only issue I had with him was that he forgot his socket wrench set at the previous install and needed to borrow mine to get the NID open.

    I'm happy with the DSL line, now that it is installed, but I truly wonder if all of these problems would have occurred if I'd ordered the Verizon package instead of the Covad one. I got the feeling that Verizon was sending the trainees out to deliver the CLEC loops, while sending the more competent (a relative term!) techs out to service Verizon customers.

    Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl dominos.

  • Verizon (BA) was highly inexperienced too (Score:3)

    by snopes ( 27370 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @06:38AM (#155732) Journal
    I have no idea how true these claims are WRT Covad, but here's what I saw. I contracted DSL from BellAtlantic 2 years ago. The tech who came to install it put the high pass filter in at the box and ran my line off the phone terminals. At the time I had no idea how ridiculous this was. But after waiting more than a week for a tech to return, I ambushed a guy working in someone else's apartment. I showed him the work done by the previous tech and he just started laughing his ass off. He set me up with a new filter in the apt. with the voice hooked into my existing phone wiring and the data run to a new internal line to where my systems were. So, my point is, Verizon wants us to think Covad techs were clueless. Well, I can guarantee there were just as many clueless Verizon techs out there.

    That said, the service has been excellent for these two years. Outages occur, but usually short lived (2 hours) and perf has been exactly as advertised (620/90). I know I probably got lucky in this regard, but I really don't have a negative thing to say about the service. I just find it highly amusing that they would criticize the quality of someone elses techs. This is the same company whose techs I've actually seen first hand pull other people's circuits down just so they can close the order they're working on at that moment.
  • Verizon is one of the worst telcos in the country, behind Ameritech and SBC...

    Ameritech is owned by SBC, so really Verizon is number 2(huh huh huh number 2).

    The other companies SBC owns are :
    Southwestern Bell
    Pacific Bell
    Nevada Bell
    SNET
    Cingular Wireless
    Sterling Commerce
    Prodigy Communications

    Is it just me or does it seem all of the phone companies are flowing back together again, to create a monopoly like we had before. I wonder how long before the government starts paying attention and breaks them up?
  • I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "I wonder how many "all your tech support is belong to us!" posts we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here..." posts we're gonna see here..." we're gonna see here...
  • it's true installing dsl is a nightmare. my experience amounted to a pissing match between covad and verison. verison was a no show twice. they even had the techs try to pressure me into getting verision's dsl service. they said things would go smoother that way. covad DID do the ' oh the line isn't installed' bit, when it actually was. when it was all said and done i lost five days of work and it took 3 months.

    it's a shame, the ones who really get burned in all this is the customer.

    i hear cable install is a breese. too bad the terms and conditions usually suck.(dynamic ip's no servers allowed......)
  • i know i'm a bad speller but that just ridiculous.

  • Verizon has to be one the worst companies in existance. I agree that union labor is partly to blame. My Verizon phone line is really terrible quality. I never can get higher than 26.4 on a modem because of the poor line quality. Plus my phone has gone out about 4 times this past year. This last occurance I managed to get them to finally put a NIC box on the outside of my house. Now I don't have to answer the dumb question of Are you sure it's not your internal lines? nonsense. BTW, it was always the Verizon line being down and not my lines. I have seen, I'm not kidding here, Verizon trucks in my neighborhood every day for the last couple of years.

    Anyway, Starpower [starpower.net] is bringing a new fiber optic line into my neighborhood and they are offering phone service through it (as well as cable)!! I already told them I want to sign up as soon as possible. I have had dreams about the moment I no longer have to rely on Verizon for anything! Strangely enough, Verizon is digging new phone lines for my neighborhood at the same time. We have 2 work crews now - it's like a war zone here.

    I've been telling those idiots that we needed new lines for years and now that there's real competition, they finally give it to us. Well sorry Verizon, too little, too late. Hello Starpower!

  • If my experience with Verizon and Covad is any indicator (and a quick perusal of DSL Reports says it is) then there's no need for Covad to fake DSL trouble with Verizon. I waited over three months for those Baby Bell clowns to get their act together. Once they did, one quick visit from Covad and I was off and running.
    --
  • With Verizon as my telco, I have seen their
    habits twice: once with Northpoint which
    went bankrupt and once with Covad 3 months ago.
    For EVERY appointment arranged with Verizon,
    Verizon would fail to show on the first appointment. In addition, Northpoint made
    two trouble reports before my DSL would work
    --- my first installation with Northpoint
    took 10 months (August, 1998, to May, 1999),
    of which several months can be attributed to
    Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic).

    When I got DSL service with Speakeasy.com 3 months
    ago with underlying provider Covad,
    I read that of all the telcos Covad worked
    with, Verizon caused Covad the most trouble/delays. Part of the problems Covad said
    they had with Verizon was just what the complaint
    here is against Covad
    (the pot calls the kettle black).
    As I recall, Verizon would list
    (I gather for regulator's reading) every failure
    by Verizon itself as a no-show (eg, with Covad,
    Verizon failed to show on April 3, 2001).

    Here is a quote from Speakeasy when I scheduled
    installation,
    " We apologize to the undue inconvenience to our East Coast customers, but Bell Atlantic [Verizon]
    and Bell South's tactics of calling all missed loop installs no access issues is forcing us to
    make this a neccesary step until Covad corrects
    this matter with them."

    When I asked about Verizon's missed date,
    which cost me $250 by taking off work to be home,
    Speakeasy's employee Heather wrote,
    as if this was Verizon's routine to miss
    appointments then after the fact reschedule,
    "Verizon rescheduled your
    installation to April 5."
  • Sorry you had a bad experience with iatse. I was a "known associate" for 2 years. I was a stagehand, nice job, paid well..hell actually i went and got my card back a few years ago, just so i could work the kiss show and hang out backstage.
    Unions are like anything else, there are good ones and bad ones.
  • Since Qwest never answers their phone.

    (It's all Covad's fault! Yeah, that's the ticket ...)
  • He: I left my tools at your house. Give'em back.

    Me: You can pick them up between 8 am and 2 pm on Wednesday the 31st.

    (Me goes to work on the 31st and he has to call me back to reschedule)

    Seriously, if Verizon was getting so many bogus tickets, you'd think their dept would be happy to be able to resolve so many by just crossing them off and get a large increase in Productivity! Of course, the reason they didn't do this is that Verizon is just blowing smoke to cover for all the problems they intentionally caused to lasso Covad customers into their own arms...

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • ZDNET on the lawsuit (Score:4)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:34AM (#155743) Journal
    This story ran yesterday at ZDNET [zdnet.com]
  • Or: I'll drop them off at your house sometime between 8am and 9pm this week. If you're not there, we'll have to reschedule 2 months from now.
  • If you title your post "union laziness", please mention something about "union laziness". Thank you.

  • They go around and UNPLUG CLEC's DSLAMS ,just because. Happened to me, took them two weeks to
    "fix" it.
    --
    www.alphalinux.org

  • DDoS (Score:5)

    by AnalogBoy ( 51094 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:41AM (#155747) Journal
    Now of course, they have to deal with the DDoS from the /. effect..

    Could the anonymous reader be another covad employee?
  • Thats nice; however it seems you don't take into proper consideration that corporations can own alot of things, including gov'ts.
  • I have to agree, here - living in NYC, I was dreading ordering DSL. Everyone I know that dealt with Verizon directly (and a few who went with local ISPs offering DSL) had horror stories to relate. 6 weeks was the quickest install, 6 months was the longest, not to mention having to take off numerous days from work to let the techs in and whatnot, running new copper pairs in the building (if an apartment building).

    A contractor I know (who does installs for Covad) mentioned Speakeasy, so I went to dslreports.com [dslreports.com] and checked them out. Looked good (in NYC, anyway), so I ordered their /usr/radsl/pro or somesuch (1.5 down, 384 up) and 10 days later I was getting just that. The Covad employee I spoke to during the process had to check to see who (locally) would provide my line...Verizon! Not good. (Though his actual quote was, "OK, we're about done on our end; let's see who gets the ball next...oh crap! You've got Verizon! Ok, that stays between you, me and the barn door.") (I assumed that to mean he didn't want me repearing that but hey, I'm a New Yorker - what do i know about barn doors? ;)

    No tech had to come by, my self-install kit arrived a few days late but all in all, I had the connection I wanted in less than 2 weeks.

    Speakeasy certainly gets my recommendation (though it's unfortunate that most of my friends had DSL by the time I tried Speakeasy ;)

  • Heh, but not just their web developers...

    On a similar note, one of the customer service databases in use at Verizon has a column in their customer table called something like "IRATE_CUSTOMER_IND"

    If you're loud and abusive in demanding that your phone service actually work when you're paying for it, you get slapped with a "1" in this field.

  • I remember about a year ago, in Northern Virginia, the Bell Atlantic/Verizon employees went on strike. For several days, when you called 411, you'd be on hold for several minutes. I'm sure that many of the Bell employees defected to Covad. Now, if I were a pissed-off ex-Bell/Verizon employee, I'm sure that I would do my best to f*ck with Ma Bell.

    --
    microsoft, it's what's for dinner

    bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
  • When things like that happen to me I wonder if all the Verizon employees are drunk or just stupid. I am glad that they have some kind of competition, I just feel sorry for everyone at Covad for having to deal with their extreme incompetence.

    --
    microsoft, it's what's for dinner

    bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com

  • In the past few hundred years, we have seen the emergence of the neo-liberal theory of political and economic action. In that same time period, many nations recognized--often in formative documents, such as the United States' Declaration of Independence and later the Bill of Rights--the rights which philosophers had recognized as "natural rights," belonging to every person. These rights are, quite simply, life, liberty, and property. The Bill of Rights in the U.S. also recognized additional rights stemming from these rights, rights that the Framers felt were critical to preventing a tyrannical government. These rights included the freedom of speech, the freedom of written speech (i.e. freedom of the press), the right to peaceably assemble, the right to express one's religion, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to petition, the right to due process, and the right not to incriminate oneself in a court of law. The Framers recognized these rights as the rights necessary to sustain a representative democracy and protect the citizenry from a tyrannical government.

    The Framers specifically forbade the government to infringe upon these rights. This attempt to protect the citizens from their government was somewhat successful. Citizens are sometimes denied their rights by various forms of government. The right to speak freely was denied by statues prohibiting sedition. For many years, blacks were denied the right to keep and bear arms--the last thing a lynch mob wants to find is a well-armed victim. The right to peaceably assemble has been trampled upon time after time when anti-establishment groups attempted to demonstrate. Most of the citizenry now faces extreme hurdles in attempting to exercise its right to keep and bear arms, but the police and the criminals seem to have little trouble in exercising this right.

    By and large, though, the Framers were successful in protecting our rights from government infringement. Even some recent challenges to the freedom of speech, such as the Communications Decency Act, have been struck down in whole or in part by court as contrary to the First Amendment guarantees of freedom. The Framers were generally successful in recognizing the danger inherent in a government entrusted with the power necessary to maintain order and protect its citizens' rights.

    The Framers did not, however, protect against the greatest danger to freedom in the world today. Some corporations are now more powerful than many nation-states and exert dangerous levels of influence in the rest. Some of that influence is direct, such as action against nation-states by corporations in trade tribunals. Some is indirect, such as the threat to move an industrial installation if the minimum wage is raised or if environmental laws are strengthened. Occasionally the influence is beneficial--corporate pressure was one of the reasons the U.S. recently changed export laws regarding encryption technology that can itself be a tremendous aid to free speech in areas where such speech is not inherently protected.

    The majority of corporate influence, though, serves only one interest--corporate profit. When a community benefit (such as the relaxation of encryption export laws) comes from corporate influence, it is generally an unintended side effect. It should be clear that corporations don't seek to destroy the environment or to cause cancer by introducing new compounds into foods. They seek only to make profits; if they perceive that profits will be greater if they do not harm the environment, then they will not harm the environment. If they perceive that their profits will be greater if they do harm the environment, they will do so. Corporations, being run by humans, are inherently fallible; they make mistakes, sometimes in calculating the cost of a particular business decision. Cases where a corporation caused long-term harm due to a lack of foresight or simple ineptitude are no less numerous than cases where governments, in seeking to somehow improve life, caused tremendous amounts of harm. Nor are corporations any less likely than individuals to misinterpret data and mispredict the outcome of an action or set of actions. Quite simply, corporations are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. More importantly, though, they are not inherently moral.

    Corporations also use governments directly, even attacking freedoms that have traditionally belonged to the people. Take, for example, the various abuses of copyright law in the U.S. The most egregious is the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, which was another giant leap to sidestep the original intent of copyright law (i.e. to benefit the people through the creation of new intellectual property). The Sonny Bono Copyright Act extended copyright protection on works published after 1978 to the length of the artist's life plus seventy years or to 95 years if the work was authored by a corporation. Quite simply, the repeated extensions of the copyright term thwart one of the original benefits of copyright--namely, the idea that every work produced, copyrighted, and distributed for profit would become a part of the public domain at a later date. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, another corporate-sponsored bill, seeks to attack copyright from another angle and attack fair use. Its most onerous provision outlaws the circumvention of any device meant to control copying or displaying of information, regardless of the reason for which such circumvention is sought. Seeking to record a digital streaming audio broadcast and watch it at a later time, an activity held as legal under the fair use doctrine (in the Betamax case), is illegal if that audio broadcast has some bit of information that says it is not to be copied. Further, under subsections (a)(2) and (b)(1), the DMCA prohibits making any utility or device available to the public that can thwart such access controls. Quite simply, the DMCA does not technically remove one's rights under the fair use doctrine. However, it does remove one's ability to legally exercise those rights, if access controls are present that prevent the exercising of those rights.

    It is the corporations, then, that we must protect ourselves against. Like the radicals who sought to form a new, largely libertarian nation in a world of monarchies and empires, we must struggle to protect our rights against another challenge. Like those radicals, we should seek not to eliminate the force that threatens our liberties but instead to eliminate the threat. Through legislation, political activism, and economic activism, we must seek to protect our rights against the tyranny of the corporations.


  • Companies unfortunately do these types of things. Recently I've heard (seriously not a joke) that some of the power companies had knowingly forced themselves into bankruptcy so politicians would ease sanctions and allow them to charge higher prices for power.

    Many people look at things on the whole eastern telco view as being monopolized by Verizon as it stands so creating an outrageous scenario followed by massive complaints against Verizon would have done Covad some good in the eyes of the courts, however I would be careful about taking Verizon's word for it since their not an independent party to the case, and will often point out the best faults they could find whether or not they're circumstantial.
  • Reckon this is all pretty redundant when there's http://www.DSLReports.com to be had, but ...

    I'm going through my second round of dsl installation (i moved):

    First one through Flashcom:
    Took ~5 months from order date. Flashcom folks were good; Covad folks were great; Verizon nee Bell Atlantic folks sucked donkey.
    BA came to my home three times; first two, they spent about 2 minutes, then left citing some shear nonsense. Third time, they drilled two holes through a bed room window about 50' feet away rather than one 7' from where my computer was. The tech also used swear words and smelled of something unpleasant.

    This second time - Earthlink has been decent; Covad has been good; Verizon has sucked. They've so far cancelled my order because they spelled my name incorrectly as Stephen rather than Steven. But they had the right phone number and address, and they never seem to have problems cashing payments from Steven-not-Stephen ...

    They're all animals anyway; let them loose their souls.

    Steve
  • I truly wonder if all of these problems would have occurred if I'd ordered the Verizon package instead of the Covad one.

    A friend of mine ordered DSL from Telocity, and waited about a month for BellSouth to hook up the local line. After several phone calls, etc, he canceled the Telocity order and got DSL directly from BellSouth. Miraclulously, he was up and running less than a week later! So then he switched his existing connection over to Telocity.

    I have no doubt the Baby Bells do this on purpose. I hope Covad and the other independent DSL providers sue the shit out of these assholes and win. Of course they won't win....

    ----
  • I found out, because I went down and looked at the boxes myself. The DSP had been connected to the wrong box. Verizon came out and fixed it. Perhaps Verizon was told to put the DSP in the wrong place, but how is that possible considering that they had my phone number. The mistake was understandable. However, the fact that it took them a month to come back and fix it was unforgivable. I have to give the Covad people credit. They were out here the day after the Verizon people did the fix, as well as the day after the first attempt at putting in the circut. For only two days has the circut gone down in a year and it was Verizon's fault when they did some Central Office equipment upgrade. Maybe Covad was lying about that, but I doubt it.

  • lawsuit (Score:4)

    by selectspec ( 74651 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:39AM (#155758)
    Versizon is suing [cnet.com] Covad over this, so it's no joke. From my own experience, Verizon is just like every other baby bell. They put the dsl circut on the wrong box about 100 yards from my building, instead of the box less than 10' from my office. It took them a month to get back out to fix it. The Covad technicians were 10x as helpful as the Verizon morons.
  • My DSL line went down.. I called my provider, who called Covad. Covad called Verizon. 15 days 8 technician visits later, Verizon finally fixed my line.

    The problem: They had installed a bridge tap, which gave someone else phone service on my dsl line. Bridge taps are illegal, btw.

    I tried to remain sane about the entire thing, but when a tech comes out every other day for two weeks to fix a one-touch problem, that's beyond any ineptitude I thought could exist.


    --------------
  • Well, sure, for an OC-3, they'll give you good service... you're paying a few thousand a month for that one!

    Actually, they like to deliver service via OC here when they can economincally justify it becuase it is a much better solution than lotsa copper. We don't pay extra for the OC shelf, just what we would have paid for the T1's anyway. Now that's not to say they aren't making good money off of us, just that they *did* have a choice and they chose OC.

  • In defense of Verizon... (Score:3)

    by slykens ( 85844 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @06:54AM (#155761)
    Well, not really total defense... It seems so far everyone is all over Verizon because they are a bad company. Well, that's true most of the time. Remember, DSL is voodoo anyway, but very cool voodoo.

    My company has 13 T1's from various providers, being local, ld, voice and data. In our old building Verizon provided the local loop on OC-3. I called Verizon one day to tell them we were going to move and to give them a heads up that we'd need a new OC-3 installed. The engineer I talked to asked me what I was doing after lunch that day. He actually wanted to meet me that day to being the process.

    As far as our local CLEC is concerned all they had to do was submit a move order, even a few days ahead of our move, and their T1s to us owuld have been moved with all the others. They couldn't do that and missed our move date by a week. When my contract is up with them I am going to find out if the CLEC's numbers are portable.

    Just look at it this way. Verizon's corporate culture may be ineptitude and the union way, but some of their employees are actually A-OK guys just trying to get the job done in a shitty situation, give them the benefit of the doubt unless they do something really dumb or anti-social in front of you.
  • I can attest to the general lack of competence by the Bell companies.

    In my area, I'm still unable to get DSL service (basically, because SWBT chose to place all the homes in my neighborhood on a central office switch that's geographically further away than a more sensible alternative, located not far from my house). Therefore, I get reamed for ISDN 128K service.

    In the past, I used SWBT as my ISP as well as the provider of my ISDN line, because they offered "unlimited" dial-up ISDN for the same price as 56K modem dial-up. I changed to another ISP about 6 months ago, though - because they offered me a static IP for very little additional money.

    Well, now my ISP changed their billing rules, and they've become too expensive - so I tried to go back to SWBT. Turns out, since they're merging with Prodigy Internet, they have no clue whether they actually sell ISDN dial-up Inet access or not! On one support call, I was flat out told "No - we no longer do ISDN." Another time, I was told "Prodigy Internet doesn't do tech. support for ISDN customers, so we don't allow new sign-ups. Existing ISDN customers can keep their accounts though." I emailed their tech support on Monday (support@swbell.net) to see what they said. After 2 days, I got a reply that was totally irrelevant to my question. (Explanation that SWBT still does ISDN line installs, and a number to call to set up ISDN service.) After writing back again, complaining about the lack of attention to my email and incorrect answer - someone else replied that evening. They simply said "Yes, we still offer ISDN internet access as well as ISDN service." and gave me the Prodigy Internet 800# to call with further questions about it.

    If it's this hard just to sign up for dial-up Internet access with a Bell company, just think of the hassles I'll get if I actually have problems with my connection later on!
  • When Covad suddenly shut off DSL services, I cannot tell you how much this affected corporate america (our company included). Maybe this will be the next NBC movie or next hacker movie? Anybody in Hollywood reading this I am sure is having those kinds of thoughts go through there heads.

  • Not radioactive, just radioemissive.

  • Now that this is in the open, presumably the behavior will stop and it should be a lot easier
    to get technical support as a customer!

    I guess every cloud has a silicon lining... or something like that.

  • Verizon claims that up to 50% of Covad's customer problems were not, in fact Verizon's fault. That means that Verizon admits that _at least_ half of the problem was their fault. But far be it from me to suspect the largest of the baby bells (actually I think 4 of them. plus GTE. plus others) to abuse its monopoly status of over half the local lines in the country.
  • "At one point, I prepared a summary [of trouble tickets that showed] only approximately 2 of the 200 tickets involved genuine ILEC problems."

    "The lawsuit is supported by more than a score of sworn statements by Covad employees. "

    "In affidavits, former Covad workers said that the false reports were collected systematically, and they estimated that as many as 50 percent of the reported troubles were false."

    So, statistically, the next (or previous) 198 out of 200 tickets definitely were Verizon's fault. If you have 22,000 problems and you know for sure who caused at least 11,000 of them, who are you going to suspect caused some of the others. You've got former employees (number not disclosed) making dodgy, carefully worded accusations at the behest of Verizon.

  • In which case, the real world consequence is that Covad goes out of business because they can't get ILEC problems fixed, and they are sued by Verizon.

  • What about those power companies that didn't go into bankruptcy that are getting special concessions and I've heard (seriously not a joke) may be given monopoly power over a very large percentage of the California market, at the exclusion of other companies whose executives contributed to the political opposition's presidential campaigns.
  • I think that their point is that the bogus reports contributed to horrible service. When employees are responding to bogus errors they are not available to support customers with 'real' problems, or to do installs shich they might otherwise be doing. Over time, a constant stream of bogus reports can make the difference between a slow time and an outrageously long response time.

    The nasty thing is that, because the Covad managed to get regulatory relief against Verizon because of the complaints, Verizon couldn't afford to just blow off the multiple bogus complaints from Covad. They had to allocate resources to Covad that wold otherwise go to legitimate customer complaints.

    This could also affect the kind of response that non-Covad customers got from Verizon. If Verizon employees got used to the fact that 2/3 of the complaints that they had to handle weren't legitimate complaints, then ALL customers could start getting a "Oh yea, you think it's broken, do you? Just what did you do to it this time?" response from Verizon support techies.
    --

  • I have long wondered if a large monopolistic company could wreck some havoc by hiring a handful of independant programmers and telling them to start submitting bogus bugzilla reports, submitting patches with intentional bugs and doing other creative things to break the trees of large OSS projects.
    --
  • When Covad suddenly shut off DSL services, I cannot tell you how much this affected corporate america (our company included). Maybe this will be the next NBC movie or next hacker movie?

    Yeah, nothing makes for riveting television like corporate america hitting the 'Refresh' button again and again and bitching about not being able to get their stock quotes.

  • The company I work for has a number of ISDN lines going to places on the east coast. The reliability of these lines for the first few months of operation is usually horrible. One problem we have seen _many_ times, is they claim they tested the line, and there were no problems..."It must be your equipment!" Imediatly after they do "their testing", the problems fix themselves. In this process, Verison takes no blame.

    I can easily see Verison considering problems like these as false trouble claims. We now just immediatly call them when there is a problem, and open a ticket. 95% of the time they admit to a problem, or "test" the problem away.

    One lady actually had the audacity to say "sir, you know we are Verison, we don't have problems like that." The funny part is that ticket was actually a problem they admitted!

    Anyway, I believe Verison is playing games with Covad.

    Disclaimer: I own Covad stock, although not much.

    -Pete
  • How do you know that they put the DSL circuit on the wrong box? Did you find this out from Verizon? Or in Covad tell you that this was what happened. If Covad told you that this was the problem, it might not have been, Covad may have blamed Verizon to cover there own mistake. How do you know that the circuit from Verizon was ordered correctly?

    Having worked in the telecomm field for many years, I have found that the techs and engineering staff for the circuits at the ILECs are generally good. Its the tech support and sales staff that are wholly incompetent. If you can get through the maze of tech support to talk to the install tech or engineer you can usually get stuff done quickly and correctly.

  • not that i blame them... (Score:3)

    by zerOnIne ( 128186 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:42AM (#155780) Homepage
    i tried going with verizon (then bell atlantic) for my dsl service when i first came to boston last year... between myself and my roommate (both computer professionals) 3 computers and 5 OS flavors/versions, we couldn't get the stupid thing to work... ever... i'm sure you're wondering, "maybe your building's wiring was borked" or something... well, we called up Speakeasy [speakeasy.net] and *poof*, we had DSL. The covad rep helped us get our hardware wired in, and we were up and running in no time... when i moved to my new apt, we got speakeasy/covad there too, without a hitch... we're even hosting Aravir.net [aravir.net] out of our apartment, thanks to 10 global static IPs, using a real ethernet bridge (no PPPoE)... not that i really wish a corporate-level DoS on anyone, but if i did, i'd definitely vote for verizon... they suck so much, i believe that the next black hole will form centered on their corporate HQ...

    pax
    -----

  • Other links:
    Reuters [yahoo.com]
    AP [yahoo.com]
    Verizon PR [yahoo.com]
  • This is business as usual for Verizon, remember when they tried to sue 2600 for the domain name thing? Sue first, ask questions later.

    AND, having worked for Airtouch (excellent company to work for) when it was bought out by Bell Atlantic (bane of existence, change your name all you want, you're still Bell) This sort of thing is quite normal. The people high up in the chain at Verizon are as much of money grubbing, scum-sucking fools as Larry Ellison. Too bad Covad went bust before they had the chance to bring what ANY of the Baby Bells do to competition in their areas. USWest does it here in AZ, PacBell does it in CA, Verizon does it on the east coast. It's pathetic.

  • Um. Verizon's broadband engineering staff isn't unionized, unless it just happened.

    correct but the SPLICERS are union and they bring the line to your d-mark

    Now back to you. Are you so nastily antiunion because you sit on a lot of corporate boards and own a lot of stock in companies that stand to lose cheap labor to union drives? Or are you (A) privileged enough to never have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck, or (B) a self-loathing workaholic who likes carrying a beeper 24/7 and never going on vacation?

    I was a Teamster for 10 years. Unions are bullshit

    I am finally solvent to the point where I don't live paycheck to paycheck. Union's had nothing to do with that.

    I work pretty hard and as such I get paid pretty well. I go on vacation now and again.

    As a Sys Admin in Manhattan I can assure I have really good first hand knowledge of how crappy Verizon is. As a person who has a lot of friends who have worked there since the AT&T days I can assure you if you go to the Telephone Bar (named for it clientel) on 10th and 2nd you'll find many Verizon workers drinking at 11 AM.

    ---

  • Verizon is horrendous (Score:5)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {25melle}> on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:57AM (#155786) Homepage Journal
    Here on the East Coast Verizon is The Great Satan. Especially in Manhatan. It works like this:

    "Well fellas we got us 30 DSL hook ups scheduled for taday an' looks like 25 of'em is Covad. Whatta we say to DSL that ain't Verizon?"

    "Fuck 'em."

    "And why do we say that?"

    "Because we ain't got no stock in 'doz companies."

    "Right. Now lis'sen, it's 9 AM I want'cha ta do the 5 Verizon jobs and then meet us at the bar on 10th and 2nd by 11. Hey we're fucking union what're they gonna do; fire us?"

    This really happens, every day.
    ---
  • Christ, who pissed in your wheaties??!

    I don't doubt that Verizon sucks -- I'm just skeptical of your statement that getting sued is going to be good for Covad. Large company sues smaller company that happens to be in the right is not usually good news. Remember what happened to Aureal?

  • What sweet revenge for people like me that endured months of wrangling...

    Uh... Did you read the article? Verizon is suing Covad, claiming that all those problems that Verizon is getting blamed for are actually Covad's fault. Sorry, no revenge today.

  • Verizon: Shoot to Kill. (Score:4)

    by SPYvSPY ( 166790 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @06:08AM (#155794) Homepage
    What sweet revenge for people like me that endured months of wrangling with the various disconnected business units of Verizon to sort out the simple task of processing my Covad work order. I spent hours on the phone with the mentally-crippled drones at Verizon because they kept rejecting Covad's DSL work orders for my DSL line.

    The reason, I finally discovered after so much hassle, is that Verizon keeps a separate "service" address for certain customers that is wholly unrelated to the street address. For instance, my service address listed my city as "Manhattan." Folks, Manhattan is a borough in New York City, and how I (or Covad) was supposed to know Verizon's service addressing system is beyond me. Of course, Verizon's systems are too fragmented to cross reference a street address, so they just kept rejecting the order again and again.

    Obviously this was very frustrating for me, but also for Covad. Covad really worked as my advocate during this process, and I saw first hand how stupid the Union-teet-feeding cretinous knee-biting Verizon employees were. We're talking the sludge at the bottom of the barrel here.

    To make matters worse, when the Verizon techs finally showed up, I had already spent two days waiting around my house missing work while Verizon failed to appear at all. They guy they sent was a complete loser with a totally unprofessional attitude. (He kept asking if he could play ping-pong because I have a table.) Then he announces that he can't find the box, and makes me go around knocking on my neighbors' doors to locate the goddamn box. When we finally find the thing, he spent about ten minutes (out of the ~30 hours of work that I missed) fiddling with a box that was OUTSIDE in PLAIN VIEW and DID NOT REQUIRE ME TO BE HOME. Then he promptly left all of his gear in my house and harrassed me for days afterward to try to get it back. (I fedexed it to him at home, on my penny. Thank you so much.)

    I really learned to hate Verizon during that experience, so I applaud any effort to obstruct Verizon. As far as I'm concerned Verizon has a price on their head in the commercial marketplace, and any bounty hunters have an absolute right to shoot to kill.
  • Hmmm, who's a Final Fantasy fan?

    Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! It's me, right?
    Seriously, though... I play so much FF that I think I'm developing carpal tunnel just from all the walking back and forth to level up.

  • Furthermore (Score:5)

    by Psmylie ( 169236 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:40AM (#155796) Homepage
    They convinced hundreds of Verizon's employees that they had Carpal Tunnel.
  • When I went to read the article, the site (newscenter.verizon.com) tried set a cookie on my machine. The name of the cookie: PROACTIVE_ID. I'm just waiting for the PARADIGM_SID and SYNERGY_DYNAMICS cookies.


    Enigma

  • Idea! (Score:4)

    by Tebriel ( 192168 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:35AM (#155806)
    Hey, let's submit a bunch of fake requests to ourselves and it'll make us look so busy that we won't have to do quality support! But wait, what if we spent that time on actually increasing quality? Nah...it'd never work.
  • The mistake is thinking it's a 2 horse town. It's not. Regardless of who it's from, DSL has gotten a very black eye. Cable has a reputation for decreasing speed as more users connect and all the script kiddies to deal with. Dial-ups are taking the market. Why do you think less than aprox 3% of the USA has high speed. I'm not paying more for a connection that is going to make life miserable. Some day high speed will be ready for prime time and the masses, but not yet.
  • i hope you mean getting technical support from Verizon, because they're the ones who have been horrid IME (in my experience). maybe it's just my reseller, but i've always received excellent service for my Covad DSL and negligent service from NYNEX -> Bell Atlantic -> Verizon.

  • Our tech support people..... (Score:5)

    by canning ( 228134 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:44AM (#155825) Homepage
    get that all the time.
    • My mouse just stopped working.
    • It was like that when I came in this morning.
    • The files just dissappeared.
    • I didn't touch a thing!

    Business as usual.


    Murphy's Law of Copiers

  • WHat you say is true in many places, but I have to admit, not everywhere. I happen to live in teh sticks and I mean the sticks. We have a mom & pop phone company that got bought by a company that specializes in owning mom & pops. They deployed DSL in many flavors. I got it from day one and have never been happier.

    The DSL line hardly EVER goes down (unlike my friends RoadRunner service), when I had bandwidth issues after a recent storm , it was fixed in a day. I run 40 domains through my SDSL pipe (legally - they aren't as anal as other providers) and it has been great.

    So YMMV, but it seems DSL from smaller providers may work better, because everytime I hear someone complain about DSL , its from a big provider or ISP having to go through a big provider/telco :)

    So from my standpoint, DSL rocks and is an incredible way to get onto the internet, IF your provider knows what they are doing.... I mean I can get 1.1MBps SDSL (down AND up) for $450/month when a T1 can cost you $1500/mo or more. Its a great (and fairly inexpesnive) technology and look out when the newer stuff comes out.... Amazing what they cram down 2 wires!

  • Who to believe? (Score:3)

    by baptiste ( 256004 ) <{su.etsitpab} {ta} {ekim}> on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @05:50AM (#155832) Homepage Journal
    My knee jerk reaction would be to blame Verizon. Remember, the baby bells have quite a checkered history - anyone who's lived through one of theie union strikes knows how nasty things can get and how destructive they can be. SLashed pay phone cords, taking phones off hook all over the city, cutting a few pairs inside thousand pair bundles, etc, etc

    Is Verizon pushing bad lines on Covad on purpose at teh highest levels? I doubt it. But could it be happening at a lower level - I'm sure of it.

    All it takes is a union supervisor telling his union lackeys that Covad & other non telco companies threaten their jobs and to remember that when they install the lines for COvad to use - I'm sure many would be unusable. You'd be surpised how often stuff like this happens.

  • From the verizon release [verizon.com], near the bottom:
    One concession that Covad cashed in on was payments under Performance Assurance Plans. "Under the Performance Assurance Plans, we are held financially responsible for faulty loop provisioning. Covad abused these plans. Using their bogus trouble tickets, Covad received inflated payments and rebates," said Barr.
    What this implies is that Verizon paid without subtracting for the tickets that were bogus. That's purely Verizon's fuckup, and I can see it from here. I can't imagine what a judge is going to do when the defense starts showing him the fine print on the rest of their deal...

    --Blair

  • That post is not off topic. Moderators beware! Stupid moderation will be avenged in meta-moderation!

    I'm not a karma whore, so go ahead and mod this down (as you modded down this one [slashdot.org]); you'll be meta-moderated too.

  • That would only work if you could blame MS bugs for a failure in Linux/BSD.

    Perhaps this is the secret agenda behind WINE [winehq.org]?

  • Revenge can be sweet:

    He: I left my tools at your house. Give 'em back.

    Me: You can pick them up between the hours of 7:25 and 7:35 Tuesdays and Thursdays

  • I had Verizon DSL for about a year before I switched to another provider. The only reason I switched was because I wanted a faster upstream speed. The honest truth is that the service was quite good. Speeds were up to par and I can only remember 1 or 2 short outtages for the year.

    It seems common place these days (at least here in NY) to blame Verizon for everything. Every DSL provider has to go through Verizon's equipment at some point, so why is it that some have much more trouble than others? As much as I dislike the monopoly that Verizon is trying SO HARD to hang on to, I still find it quite unfair of a company such as Covad to slander them with lies and fake reports. That rates pretty low in my book.

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