Doug on IP Comm » phone

New mobile service: AT&T or Verizon?

Doug Mohney — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:17:06 +0000

While I’ve had Sprint since forever, I’m in the process of reviewing other options. Sure I’ve got “unlimited” data, but I’ve been paying the $10 extra for WiMax, but I’ve only used it a handful of times at best. I have to pay more money to enable Wi-Fi tethering on my HTC Evo.

I don’t have strong (Sprint) cell service where I live; I was shocked to see how much better AT&T was.

And then there’s the weird software roaming glitch I encountered when I went downtown to DC. The EVO up and died in 3G, giving “Network error” but 4G worked fine when it was available. To clear the error, I had to cold boot my phone.

However, both AT&T and Verizon have the whole data cap thing – which seems to defeat the purpose of having LTE in the first place. And Verizon has had considerable hiccups with the operation of its LTE network.

Soo…I don’t know. I’ve been pleased with the AT&T 3G data service on my Apple iPad and it was a treat to be able to swap out SIM cards (see www.dougontech.com) in Iceland to enable 3G service out of the U.S. Going to LTE is likely to cause all kinds of weirdness should I have to travel overseas.

Verizon repair Sunday phone call

Doug Mohney — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:11:58 +0000

Verizon supervisors work on Sundays, it appears.

I spent 10 minutes on the phone going over the repair status of my Verizon landline with a Verizon supervisor. I currently have dial-tone through a temporary jury-rig (hmm, reminds me, must take pictures) between my NIC and my neighbor’s.

The sup was concerned that I didn’t get phone calls from either one of the techs who came out on Friday and Saturday. I told them I wasn’t as torked off about that so much as the call center person who told me that my line was fix on Saturday, go unplug-and-replug your phones in. The supervisor noted that, well, the quality of call center people in the technical industry these days…

ANYway, after telling him for my great-great love when I did talk to the techs and how I didn’t understand how Verizon could tell me it could be up to 7 days for someone to even look at the problem, he said I should see a dig crew out on Monday, presuming Miss Utility can get out here and mark the other lines (cable, electrical).

Straight talk from a Verizon supervisor…

Doug Mohney — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:02:06 +0000

At 11:40 AM, a Verizon supervisor — the second tier guys who actually know what the f*** is going on — called me back and clarified the status of the phone repair–

1) The copper is dead between my house and the distribution point, there are no alternatives, Verizon is going to have to dig and put in new copper.

2) This process may take up to 7 days (worst case), since it is now a weekend, Miss Utility has to be called to mark the lines and then Verizon’s contractor has to come out to dig-dig-dig… *sigh*

3) “Bob” the supervisor noted that if the first-line person who had taken the call had scrolled down the record a bit more, she should have seen that A) Phone line was dead, Jim and B) There was another work order generated for replacing the copper from this morning’s tech assessment. So, she should have not told me that I had service restored and go through the rote ritual of “unplug the phones, wait 5 minutes, try again, that doesn’t work, call back.”

The supervisor — who I bet installed his share of network when he was younger — did not think kindly of the first line response person. Ya gotta love a guy who doesn’t sugar coat things

*sigh*

The moral of this story should NOT be “I hate Verizon.” I love the line guys and techs who don’t try to B.S. me, they just tell me what’s going on, like the guy yesterday up from Richmond working through the backlog of repairs. These are people who care about the customer and have pride in their work and they know that they can make a person’s day because they’ve dealt with some of the back office crap and it doesn’t make them any happier.

I really wish Ivan and the rest of the Verizon senior leadership would stop and take a moment to reassess and repair Verizon’s customer service organization on the landline side.

P.S. Shoutout to Andy Abramson — happy to make you smile!

PAETEC goes California

Doug Mohney — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:06:10 +0000

PAETEC, one of the more interesting CLECs around, has opened up business in Northern California. New markets include San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacremento, with a new sales office in Walnut Creek to anchor the expansion.

Adding Northern California has also added 20 jobs in sales, operations, and support staff; PAETEC isn’t ruling out adding more jobs in the future. The new expansion gives the company coverage in 83 of the top 100 service markets around the country.

Based in Rochestery, NY, PETEC is a business-focused CLEC with a full portfolio of solutions ranging from simple voice minutes to data and Internet services, a hosted software solution to manage service delivery, plus a leasing division for CPE and the Allworx SMB IP PBX division.

Reporting financial results last week, PAETEC reported revenues a bit over $399 million for Q1 2009 and citing adjusted EBITDA of $63.9 million. For GAAP-style reporting, the first quarter net loss was $3.3 million, so I’ll leave it to the accountants to discuss which number is “better.”