My Telephone providers are idiots

[hawkeye08]

I see that my attempt at rational explanation of why things are the way they are did not work out too well. I am sure it is terribly frustrating to see a neighbor 3 miles away have a fast service and you cannot get it. Some of you have suggested a "county" business model, provide service anywhere in a county, and be forced to provide it for everyone in the county.. I see that some of you have never had to run a profitable business or even been associated with one.

Corporations are in business to make a profit for their stockholders. Some of you that have investments in the stock market may be able to appreciate that. Maybe not. Why any of you feel you are "owed" a particular service I do not understand. No corporation is going to make capital investments unless those investments can be shown by good financial analysis to pay back the investment and show a profit. A fiber fed DSLAM can easily cost a million dollars to install and to feed what? a few or a few dozen subscribers? Have you done the math to find the payback time for that capital investment?. How large of a monthly bill are you willing to pay to have that build out done?

Some of you think corporations are mindless greedy evil entities. Well I suppose they are. Their goal is to show a profit to their stockholders. If there is money to be made in an enterprise some other mindless greedy evil corporation will attempt to undercut the pricing of the first mindless greedy evil corporation and take their business. To do otherwise violates the Sherman Anti-trust act.

I personally don't think we are going to have rural telco's around that many more years. The growth is negative, and you can only sustain negative growth for so long. Of course like I said they are trying to survive by focusing on the delivery of data portion of the business. NOT the voice services.

As I said before I have NO dog anymore in the telco industry, but if you think "those greedy bas>>>>" are getting rich, you better think again. They are struggling to survive and come up with innovative ways to compete. You can believe this is you want and if you don't I don't give a rats.... I am telling you what I saw as an ex industry insider.

Your story sounds very nice, but is not complete (lacking the rest of the story). These phone companies were given monopolies and charged more than enough (overall, remember, the conditions of the monopoly were they had to provide the service for a certain area). They made a mint on the denser areas and lost a little on the rural areas, but overall, they made a large profit. The problem was that they did not invest the profit in keeping the infrastructure updated and it cost them dearly when competition was let in (other means to get phone service). They are no longer competitive and folks are running from them as fast as they can if they have an option. If the cell providers could figure out how to offer fax services, a bunch more customers would bail from their landlines. Telcos rode the gravy train too long and now they most likely will not survive.

 

[k0ua]

WISP (wireless internet service provider)
NOT cell phone service provider

WISP is kinda like high speed internet for rural areas. an antenna mounts some place outside, kinda like a satellite dish, and points at a given tower. it is more expensive than DSL / cable internet, but less expensive than satellite.

my aunt has it, and works good for them. most likely you will need to call up local WISP company and they will need to come out and get up on roof of house possibly pending on location and line of site to there towers. and test of wireless single.


cell phone internet is more expensive, vs satellite internet at least for me. and more issues with cell phone connectivity. not to mention speed and amount you can download is most likely less with cell phones.

DSL / CABLE, you might be able to go with a third party vs what you have locally. due to all the subsidizing and this and that. for a cheaper monthly bill, but you will still be limited to the local area business that maintain the actual fiber, and wires :/

=================
some issues....

normally tel company, gas company, sewage, electrical, what ever company, is normally responsible from hookup at street up to were it connects to the given companies meter or box on your house.

if the given company is responsible. for that area, they will most likely demand correct installation is done. with paper work to prove it. in case something happens and they have pay the bill.

sometimes given company will pay for X amount of length from road, and anything over that, you have to pay for.

sometimes you may get into situation were given company only responsible up to x amount of feet off the street.

sometimes you might be better off skipping the main given company directly, and working with a third party company.

This is good accurate information to the best of my knowledge also.

 

[k0ua]

Your story sounds very nice, but is not complete (lacking the rest of the story). These phone companies were given monopolies and charged more than enough (overall, remember, the conditions of the monopoly were they had to provide the service for a certain area). They made a mint on the denser areas and lost a little on the rural areas, but overall, they made a large profit. The problem was that they did not invest the profit in keeping the infrastructure updated and it cost them dearly when competition was let in (other means to get phone service). They are no longer competitive and folks are running from them as fast as they can if they have an option. If the cell providers could figure out how to offer fax services, a bunch more customers would bail from their landlines. Telcos rode the gravy train too long and now they most likely will not survive.

Yes but remember the days of monopoly and large profits were in the 80's and before.. But so many things have changed since then. I think we are more or less saying the same thing.

 

[k0ua]

These guys are taught a minimal amount of info and that's all they know. When my house was new I had one of the companies in to install they're stuff. The guy got a drill out and wanted to drill through my new floor that has heated floors. Ah, put that drill down. My whole house is wired with cat 5. I told him to wire it to my cat 5 punch block. He was lost. I said wire it 2 pair to a particular jack. He said he only knew how to do all 8 wires and that it wouldn't work. Ah yeah, I've been doing this stuff for almost 30 years, 8 wires is needed for gig but not 100 meg. I told him to wire a jack in the basement and I'll do the rest. By the time he was done I had my PC and all the rest of the wiring ready to go and it worked. Amazing... :confused3:

Not many installers will believe that a customer might know more about layer 1 ethernet connectivity than they do. Although many customers actually do.

 

[oosik]

Interesting. However, where I'm located I do not have land line service, DSL, cable, WISP, WHAP or WOMP. My ONLY choice is satellite for internet, cell service for phone and satellite TV. The satellite internet & TV are fantastic. The cell service is a big zero - I'm just too far from the closest tower. If I really cared, I guess I could get a satellite phone - but I don't really give a d++n.

 

[hawkeye08]

There's a lot of logic to what you say. But - consider my situation... we live within 3 miles of the nearest tower, but just out of it's range. Zero cell phone service at my house. Verizon sure didn't tell me that when they sold me their overpriced service. (Overpriced? Yep - $163/month for zero cell phone service is overpriced.) That price also includes telephone line internet service, which is dead slow IF at all. I can count on the internet going down for long periods of time several times per day. That makes it pretty hard to run a home-business.

As far a signal boosters go, those don't always work as advertised either. I've bought two and can't tell one iota difference in the signal.

Sure there are alternatives. I could build myself my own million dollar tower. Or move back to a mega size city. Or better yet, I could just complain about it here on the TbN board and get no results Either way, it's not life threatening, and I'll live through it.

Sorry - I'm bailing out of this thread - I have a tractor that's just out there calling my name

...or you could figure out what the issue with the signal is, 3 miles is not too far at all. Is the signal blocked by something? are you in a hole? Once you figure out why you don't have a signal, then you can work on the resolution to the problem. Maybe a 200' tower will solve it all, maybe not. Perhaps you need a tower 500' to the west or something... wish I was only 3 miles to the tower...

 

[phiferpharm]

Okay - My rant is officially ended. The line burial guys showed up unannounced about 45 minutes ago. Put a weird vibrating machine in the ground and had the line installed in twenty minutes. So, it wasn't 4 to 6 weeks, the machine left a barely visible trench, and the cable is a real cable versus the bell wire they strung along the ground. Now I'm a Happy camper. :thumbsup:

 

[k0ua]

Okay - My rant is officially ended. The line burial guys showed up unannounced about 45 minutes ago. Put a weird vibrating machine in the ground and had the line installed in twenty minutes. So, it wasn't 4 to 6 weeks, the machine left a barely visible trench, and the cable is a real cable versus the bell wire they strung along the ground. Now I'm a Happy camper. :thumbsup:

Doug I am glad it is resolved.. did you recognize the cable folks.? were they a local 3rd party contractor?

 

[k0ua]

JD if Verizon is providing the DSL Router/access point in your area then I would complain too. Verizon here has no landline or DSL service at all they are strictly a wireless provider. My local cable provider provides the cable "modem" but I provide my own router and a separate access point(s). The range is dependent on how the house is constructed, but in general it much more than what you are experiencing. You can of course put in more access points at your expense.. The handoff between our cell service and the wireless access points is seamless and smooth. I don't like the amount of money that I pay to Verizon either, but their service coverage around here is the best and that is why I chose them. I never said Verizon is short on cash, it is the local telco's that are suffering with reduced subscribers every day. As far as I know Verizon and all cell carriers are still growing, maybe not at the rate they once were due to saturation, but still a viable business. As far as them being crooks, thieves and low life scum, well I can't speak to that, as I have never had any inside information on them and the only ones I have met are the cute helpful ladies in the stores. We do pay a lot for their services it seems. BUT I will assure you that the financial situation for many of the rural telco's is not all that bright.

 

[JDgreen227]

kOua....Frontier purchased Verizon to provide rural landline services several years back....THEY supplied the router and deliver the landline service, Verizon is my cell provider and BOTH of them deliver such crappy performance it makes me furious. My feelings were and always will be, if they can provide urban customers with five bars of cell coverage and 15 mbps download, since I pay the same price for service as the urban dwellers do for both cell and internet, there is NO EXCUSE for my not getting the same quality of service here. NONE. I don't give a flying f*ck what it costs them to deliver that same quality to me, if they can't , then raise the price to urban subscribers who get 10X the service for the same price and let THEM pay 10X for what they get. PERIOD!!!!!