When Telecom Mergers Hit Home 131
netbuzz writes "A telecom manager submitted an essay to Network World that paints a sadly humorous picture of what the mega-telecom mergers really mean on the ground." From the article: "Well, when I heard that these companies were about to combine forces, it made my blood run cold. How would they be able to take, in each case, two companies with already broken processes and mediocre customer support and successfully merge them? How could they continue to provide me with the support I need to keep my company's networks functioning as they need to in this age of the bandwidth junkie? The answer ... at this moment, is they can't!"
Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:3, Insightful)
But seriously, did anyone really expect that consumers wouldn't be harmed by all the telecom mergers? Monopolies are always bad for consumers, which is why they are so heavily regulated. Since there can be no practical competition to a land line phone provider, the only choices that aren't inherently harmful to consumers are A. highly regulated monopoly, B. government-run monopoly, C. a non-profit cooperative.
Stop with this foolish deregulation before it's too late....
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:5, Informative)
As for wireless, you do know that all wireless communications (except same tower talk) goes over the land lines. You can't get away from the Telco just because you think its wireless or it as IP traffic.
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
I wasn't saying that cellular or IP made things magically cheaper. I was saying that competition from new mediums will tend to drive prices lower.
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:1)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
I've been thinking about that... latency is quite relative. In semiduplex voice connections, such as ham or CB radio or any other where you and other party share the same channel, you have PTT button that clearly puts boundary around each voice message. This kind of communication never appears much more discomfortable (compared to two-way telephone) to participants, because they are mentally prepared to
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:1)
Local telcos (Score:2)
So therefore they are a government granted monolopy! Water, utilitiy (power), sewer, phone, and cable are all local monolopies in place because of the government.
Long-distance telephone service is no longer monolopolized nor regulated. Local service is. When the government gets involved, prices go up, and it's usually bad for consu
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:3, Insightful)
Hrm... I'm pretty sure the grand parent just said that. He said the monopolies that aren't bad for consumers are the ones that are heavily regulated.
And in your statement, the
Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
If Janet Ley had a real alternative to Verizon and ATT, don't you think she'd be taking it?
If a company has real competition, what happens when it blows off its customers? It goes out of business. Are the incumbent telephone companies out of business?
Re:Competition (Score:1)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:1)
You disprove your own point. Telecommunications is definitely an industry with high barriers to entry. How exactly are you going to go about laying your own fiber, light it up, and then proceed to offer service with any hope of turning a profit?
The telecoms are definitely a monopoly. The only question is to what extent. The purpose of splitting up Ma Bell was to break a national monopoly and set up companies that were only r
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
. . . because the telecom monopolies are blocking VOIP traffic, thus rendering IP phones useless?
A monopoly in an industry with low barriers to entry is great for consumers, because the monopolist has to try really hard to keep it, and they have the resources to continously improve the product.
Yeah, that's until the monopolist makes the barrier to entry artificially high. Then those resources typically get devoted to improving executive compensation, rather
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
The problem isn't the services that ride in on telcos, the problem is that there are very few ways to get data pipes into your home or business because they are entrenched monopolies with extremely high barriers to entry. I have two options for non-business class (and price) high speed internet for my home - the monopoly of the phone company and the monopoly of the cable company. There's little competition between the two of them, an
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:3, Interesting)
Bah. Cellphones are a counter-example. I have no land line and use cell phones for my phone service.
What you might have meant is that wire-based communication is a kind of natural monopoly. But even that allows for some competition. Consider for example how cable is now offering telephone service.
Stop with this foolish deregulation before it's too late....
Nah. What we REALLY need is to deregulate public rights of way. Local governments
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
10 years ago, I had cable TV, and if I wanted to get online, it was via dial-up modem. Today, you've got satellite options, cell phones, broadband internet access... consumers have benefitted greatly from the fruits of competition, and that shou
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
Got any suggestions for how that can be accomplished?
I normally argue that telecoms need to be regulated into only providing connectivity, and not content. But if it were feasible to deregulate the rights of way for the wires, it would probably be a better solution.
The obvious problem with deregulating right of way is that the local governments are suppossed to act as a bargaining collective. If they got out of that business, how would it be feasib
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
While I agree with you in theory, I also think that cities with one company's phone or power lines are more aesthetically pleasing than a city with 4 (wired) phone providers and 4 power providers on every pole.
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:1)
Practical Competition. (Score:2)
There's no practical competition to land lines only because landlines are no longer practical. Cell phone networks are both cheaper and more reliable. Freeing broadcast spectum would solve all of these problems. Eliminating the monopoly on wire laying is a also a very practical solution. If there's really no money in it, people won't do it. If they do it, there's more choice for everyone.
Re:Practical Competition. (Score:2)
Hardly, for a large number of voice channels or high-speed data networks fiber and to a lesser extent copper is the only game in town. Just try finding a 43Mbps wireless connection in most parts of the country that includes a large static IP block and is as solid as a DS3 line.
I'd hardly call a cell phone network 'more reliable' than the old copper phone netwo
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
Ludicrous. Reminder, this is the telecom provider market. That means there will ALWAYS be monopolies - its the nature of the beast, like road, sewer, water, and energy providers. Regulation of those natural monopolies creates regulated monopolies. De-regulation of those natural monopolies creates unregulated monopolies.
Pick your posion, but don't pretend that deregulation will magically prevent monopolies from forming in a market where natural monopolies are unavoidable.
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:3, Insightful)
Stossel did a 1 hour episode on ABC that showed the various municipalities that de-regulated the water source, and water became cheaper and safer. Many cities are partially deregulating their bus services (buying the busses and then leasing them to competitive businesses for operation) and the costs are dropping 50% while service quotas are kept and beat. California allowed a private tollway to be
deregulation counterpoint (Score:1)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
And there is a ton of proof that unregulated monopolies are not only harmful, but so harmful, in fact, that we have anti-trust laws that make many types of monopolies outright illegal. Are you proposing those laws are anti-competitive and anti-free market?
Also note that three of the examples in your deregulated, privatized, Randian utopia are NOT conducive to natural monopolies - bus service, air
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:1)
(The USPS is the only entity that can deliver mail to a mailbox, unless it grants another entity that right. The USPS does have indirect com
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
Not necessarily. Consider what would happen if the government were to own all the telephone lines between residential houses and exchanges - and then allowed the home owner to decide which company would have control over that line, but did not provide any telecoms services themselves.
It's not completely trivial, but it wouldn't cost very much either (the government pretty much paid for all those lines in the first place
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
However, in the US, deregulation almost always means privatizing infrastructure along with service. And whoever owns the infrastructure will inevitably end up monopolizing the service in a deregulated industry.
Today's political climate would NEVER allow the US government to seize telco infrastucture under em
Technology changes things (Score:2)
For example, phone service. One used to only be able to get a 'dial tone' by having a local telco run a wire to the house. Now we can choose between that, a cell phone, or VoIP. Now local telcos do not have the same stranglehold that they used to because of technology. The gov should drop regulation on it.
In the future think about things such as ele
Natural monopolies: maybe not any more (Score:2)
Re:Welcome to the world of tomorrow (Score:2)
You place a lot of faith in "complete deregulation," do you have any examples where this lead to your consumer utopia?
give them what they want (Score:2)
Re:give them what they want (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:give them what they want (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent post really does give good advice. My provider (Speakeasy), for instance, uses its private network for all its VoIP and has decent QoS. So no, SBC can't degrade my VoIP traffic. Are they as cheap as SBC or Verizon? No, they're actually a fair bit more expensive. But that is how I choose to vote with my dollar. And when I left SBC I let them know exactly why I was leaving. Poor customer service, one arm of the company not knowing what the other arm was doing, etc. I've never, ever had any customer service issues with my current provider. It's definitely possible to find a provider that doesn't rely on SBC or Verizon, povided you live in a fairly major urban area.
Re:give them what they want (Score:2)
And there's the rub. Even in Madison, WI where a friend of mine lives you have exactly two choices for broadband. Charter or Verizon. There are a couple of other providers but only if you live downtown and they really only deal with business (according to their account rep.)
It may only have a population of 200,000+ (1/3 the size of Milwaukee) but it's hardly living in the sti
Re:give them what they want (Score:2)
Re:give them what they want (Score:2)
What we need is more options for where a good portion of the population lives. Hint: It's not the city.
Re:give them what they want (Score:2)
Basicly they have to have enough subscribers within an area to make the investment in fiber and the WIC worth while. The equipment to light up the fiber and the DSLAM's are a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of installing the fiber and WIC.
Your only options are to move or have your own fiber installed. The
How? (Score:3, Funny)
The answer is obvious, they'll outsource the customer support
Hit home? They left it a smoking ruin. (Score:1)
Re:Hit home? They left it a smoking ruin. (Score:1)
Re:Hit home? They left it a smoking ruin. (Score:2)
He meant "LTUAE".
Come On... (Score:2)
This was more of a rant than an article.
Re:Come On... (Score:3, Insightful)
Telecomm customer service and response has NEVER been good, so why call it into question in light of recent mergers?
Both of the issues exemplified in the article were new issues arising from the fact that because of the merger the new company could no longer provide services they once did. Since there is no competition due to the merger, I'd say it is reasonable to call into question how much the merger has crippled the ability of businesses to acquire and use these services. This is concrete harm to the
Re:Come On... (Score:2)
Re:Come On... (Score:1)
Re:Come On... (Score:2)
Re:Come On... (Score:2)
-nB
Re:Come On... (Score:2)
no really, that's worse. (Score:2)
Because what was bad is now impossible.
Been there done that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Been there done that (Score:2, Interesting)
Two weeks before deadline I gave up when they were telling me mid April for a March 30th move and went with a third party for the T1... they got it in 7 days, a reasonable time frame.
I told them as I cancled the T1 order the phones were next if they could not get them in on time so they "expadited" the order. Which, as far as I can tell, means "put actual effort."
The real kicker wa
Re:Been there done that (Score:1)
Re:Been there done that (Score:2)
We're actually trying to port our phone numbers to GlobalPOPS [globalpops.com], which in this area is basically rebranded Level 3. The local Level 3 POP doesn't have enough lines to support my request for them to add on another 250 customers, so they're trying to get a new DS3 from Nowheresville to Major Citytown. The DS3 order has to go through... drumroll... SBC.
(There are other moves going on at the same time, and dealing with SBC direc
Nothing New Here (Score:2)
Essentially, you get referred from one person to the next, until you come upon a situation where facts collides and your potential solution dissappears in a puff of logic.
It's just that now this problem is trickling down (up?) into the business-to-business arena.
There's an old saying... (Score:3, Insightful)
This merger frenzy is now creating corporate organisms with an exponentially larger number of hands.
What do we expect?
Maybe Fox can do a special about it and call it "when corporate bureaucracies attack!"
The Article. (Score:1, Informative)
By Paul McNamara on Tue, 04/11/2006 - 9:08am
AT&T | MCI | SBC | Verizon | Wide Area Networks
As promised in this earlier post, we're all about sharing here at Buzzblog -- specifically, sharing the soapbox. This morning you get to hear from Janet Ley, a reader and telecom manager who has a tale to tell about the impact of mega-mergers. It's amusing, in a maddening sort of way:
By Janet Ley
Those of us who consider ourse
Re:The Article. (Score:3, Informative)
In many states (my state is Illinois), there are so many pro-labor requirements that are managed by labor management, not by technicians, that I am surprised that most people still get ANY service.
If you can't call a third party to provide you service, why is that? It is because third parties are criminals if they
Re:The Article. (Score:2)
This is great (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Awful (Score:2)
The really awful thing about government supported monopoly is that they never go away and you can never compete with them no matter how incompetent they may be. If these idiots have their way, you will once again be renting your phone and begging permission to hook up a modem.
Why all the fuss... (Score:2)
Re:Why all the fuss... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why all the fuss about the telecom mergers/aqusitions? It is the nature of a free market that some companies will win and others lose.
What exactly do you think the merger of two government enforced monopolies into a larger government enforced monopoly has to do with a "free market?" The free market is not operating on phone companies. AT&T was not taken down by the free market, they were split up by the government for breaking the law and because the situation was so bad everyone had to rent their telephone as well as pay high rates for crappy service.
Re:Why all the fuss... (Score:2)
Re:Why all the fuss... (Score:2)
Since they broke up AT&T free market forces have been in play.
Making one big monopoly into a bunch of regional monopolies does not bring market forces into action. In most regions of the US one of said companies has a government enforced monopoly on the last-mile right of ways. It is not a free market when for my home I can choose to go with AT&T for my DSL line or with another company that has to get AT&T to hook it up for me and pay AT&T a pile of fees on top of the normal expense. It
Distinction (Score:2)
Local telcos until very recently (think Vonage and VoIP), have a geographic municipality-granted monolopy. If you want a dial tone, you had to have a a local telco provide one at their rates up until about 10-15 years ago.
Now for a local dial tone you can go with a telco, a cell-co, or VoIP.
Long distance was deregulated years ago and now long distance is virtually $free/minute as a result. Technology has helped with the loc
Re:Why all the fuss... (Score:1)
This is a pretty astute post. Some analysts have called the proposed AT&T/Bell South merger as "a merger out of weakness". Others h
Re:Why all the fuss... (Score:2)
They can only cut employees so far to show saving/revenue quarter over quarter. This is kind of like the wheel wrights that used to make wheels for wagons. That was a booming business back when wagons and horses were the main mode of transportation. As the automobile and the train displaced wagons the entire industry
Everything Old Is New Again (Score:5, Funny)
We don't have to.
We're the Phone Company.
Now all we need is Lilly Tomlin to take those orders and we're all set!
Mergers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is obviously retarded. They end up losing a lot of money during the merger because of this. Another problem is that a lot of companies will say something like, "Ok. Now that you're a part of us, go make us some money. Bitch." Never mind that they pretty much just cut the throat of the company, leaving it with very little ability (or authority!) to do anything.
Off topic, but I couldn't resist. (Score:2)
If I had to guess, I'd say that it meant they'd fallen and can't get up.
(This is a throwback to the annoying corporate speak article [slashdot.org] from a yesterday. Not only does the phrase "on the ground" add nothing to most of the sentences in which it appears, but it's easy to make a case that the phrase was popularized by uber-asshole Donald Rumsfeld. That's a doubl
Re:Off topic, but I couldn't resist. (Score:2)
Personal Experience (Score:2, Interesting)
From the 4th floor to the 3rd floor.
Took 36 days and 8 people to move 1 T1 Line 1 floor.
It's fucking ridiculous.
I would hate to see what would happen after the bellsouth acquisition.
Re:Personal Experience (Score:3, Funny)
At that point, I think everything will go south.
Re:Personal Experience (Score:2)
My Experience with Verizon (Score:2)
Verizon has issued dozens of tickets for the same problems, yet mysteriously the tickets close and the problems aren't fixed.
The problem I'm talking about could EASILY be remedied at the switch level. The main problem is that a few lines had call forward on busy/no answer on them. Do you think our Verizon rep could have told us that? Hell no. Do you think they'd be responsive? Hell
Re:My Experience with Verizon (Score:2)
Everybody bitches about the telco's and there problems
Everybody bitches about the FCC and the problems they cause.
When really most people dont realize the FCC can be there best friend. Its easy to make the telephone company bend over backwards and kiss your ass in three easy steps.
1. Document your problems your having with your phone company. Names, dates, times, all important.
2. Write a letter (or email) to the FCC complaint department (http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints_general.html [fcc.gov])
3-way calling can help here (Score:5, Interesting)
They hate that. But it gets results.
Especially when you say "This call is being recorded for quality control purposes".
Re:3-way calling can help here (Score:2)
I work for a company that sets up LAN's in hotels. We frequently work with both the managers/owners of the hotel, and the local ISP. If the ISP tells us one thing, and the owner another thing, the BEST and FASTEST way to get it sorted out is a 3 way call. The ISP's hate that sort of thing, but shit gets done fast.
Re:3-way calling can help here (Score:2, Interesting)
Once upon a time, this is what support was about: getting problems fixed, getting crap working. I got out of support when I could see where that 'industry' was headed.
Not to mention this kind of action e
I For One (Score:1)
Re:I For One (Score:1)
Umm.. Wouldn't that be our old AT&T overlords?
Or, our resurrected AT&T overlords.
This is obviously an attempt by the Telcos... (Score:3, Funny)
Mergers aren't about serving you better (Score:1, Interesting)
CLECs to the rescue (Score:2)
Back on topic (Score:1)
I have worked in telecom from every aspect for some time, so I have an intimate understanding of how bad this can be. I'm fortunate that my company has managed to take the correct approach of process and engineering system merging. We are in the min
I don't see what the big deal is (Score:1)
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:1)
Re: What the mergers mean on the ground. (Score:1)
Before the AT&T breakup, the service really su (Score:2)
And one time we needed a dialup line for a PDP-11/70. It took several months before I found someone at the telephone company who could tell me what they required before they could hook up the line -- the ringer equivalence for the telephone modem.
Most mergers are mistakes (Score:1, Interesting)
from http://executiveeducation. [upenn.edu]
Re:Just come up with a cool name (Score:2)
Or spend millions to come up with a new name like Sprint.
Re:Just come up with a cool name (Score:1)
Re:Just come up with a cool name (Score:2)
Re:Just come up with a cool name (Score:3, Funny)
And the "rint" in Sprint is a play on the word "rant", which is what I do what I call Sprint customer service.
Re:Just come up with a cool name (Score:2)
Re:Just come up with a cool name (Score:1)
Spending billions on a new name like Verizon... that will take care of everything.
Fixed a little typo for ya.