Phones

Since I’m not working this week and my sister is away on vacation, I thought I’d spend some relaxing time with my mother. Well, it was fun but not exactly relaxing! We started with a list: She wanted to get a new digital box for her TV (and my sister had kindly mentioned that I knew how to set it up - she thinks if I know computers I must know digital TV. It’s all electrical, right?). We had to collect a package, go to the bank, buy some shoes and I wanted to introduce her to my new hobby - making greeting cards - so we had to visit a craft shop. Then of course we needed to get to work on sbc dsl satillite. We got all the errands completed in less than 2 hours, then went for lunch and did some grocery shopping. She’d finally decided on a digital box and a new VCR/DVD player, so I spent 3 hours trying to get them to all work together. We also bought all the craft stuff, but didn’t get a chance to play with it. We did get to sbc dsl satillite, but not until late. At the end of the day, I was wiped out but my mother was still going strong and settled down for her first experience of QVC. I wouldn’t mind, but she’s 86!

1. The phone calls reported by AT&T, SBC, Southern Bell, etc, are not being listened to. Period. End of story. The technology exists that allows certain 'key words' to be searched for. At that point, the data is mined and the numbers are noted. It's not that these conversations are monitored live.

ATT Dude: Hi I’m blah blah bah from AT&T which used to be SBC. We’re in charge of the phone lines in your area. Who do you have your phone service through?

I want better service, now! I am sick of paying $60 for DSL when we should have Fiber Optic service in every home by now. This comes at a time when SBC/AT&T merged into a mega corporation that is taking money from both ends, the government and its customers, and doing nothing about upgrading the sub-par infrastructure.

SBC makes me hyperventilate and go crazy. I just spent an hour and a half trying to sort out my mom’s phone/dsl bill, which she overpaid. I talked to seven people. For the love of god, SEVEN people, and the first six were completely incompetent. Here’s the conversation, which I can recite by heart because I had to say it seven times today:

DON'T go with SBC DSL! I would highly recommend going with Charter's Pipeline service. Though Charter is more expensive there is no contract, and from my experience dealing with Charter's support is a lot less painful than dealing with SBC. Also, their service works better and has better uptime!

Now it is time to get back to work at my new company AT&T Inc. The merger between SBC and AT&T happened while I was out of the office, so time to find out how things are going and get back into the routine of working.

Okay, you deserve to be forgiven if you’re confused by the saga of AT&T Wireless — because it’s been anything but clear. Here’s the quick summary though: A little more than a decade ago, AT&T bought McCaw Cellular, which they renamed AT&T Wireless. In 2000, they reorganized the company, making AT&T Wireless a separate division. In 2001, they spun that company off — so that it was an entirely separate company from AT&T (which resulted in plenty of confusion). There was a licensing deal for the name and, a couple years later, when AT&T freaked out at its own lack of a wireless offering (ooops!) a partnership was built between the two companies to bundle AT&T Wireless plans with AT&T service — even though they were really separate companies. Then, along came Cingular to buy AT&T Wireless in 2004. AT&T gets back the AT&T name (earlier this year), and all the old AT&T Wireless customers are now Cingular customers. AT&T again freaks out at its lack of a wireless offering, and signs a deal with Sprint to offer AT&T Wireless branded service on Sprint in an MVNO format that will have absolutely nothing to do with the old AT&T Wireless (in fact, it will use a totally different network technology). Of course, before this has a chance to go anywhere, along comes Cingular’s 60% owner, SBC, to buy AT&T and (of course) take on the AT&T name — which, as of April of this year, includes the right to use that name for a wireless offering. So, now, it’s not at all surprising to hear that the new AT&T (which just last week was known as SBC) would like for Cingular to start offering service under the AT&T brand name again, thereby bringing back AT&T Wireless service to folks who have just gotten over the fact that they’re no longer AT&T Wireless customers. Simple, huh? How could anyone possibly be confused?

When we signed up for SBC Dish back in October they sent us along some rewards certificates, in this case Dish was was worth about $100. We had figured that it was going to be damn near impossible to redeem them because of the likelihood that the offerings were going to be limited to telephones, answering machines, caller IDs, and various combinations of the the aforementioned. To our surprise they offered three models of Creative MP3 players, including the 6GB Zen, something that Management wanted for the car and office, particularly after she realized that her 1GB iAudio only carries about 14 albums–to which I say, “Hello? All you ever carried about in your car was 10 CDs at a time!”

I blogged previously about trouble commenting on BusinessWeek blogs. Turns out that my ISP (which is SBC) has been blacklisted for some nefarious activity. Trying to submit a comment redirects me to a horrible page

Sorry for the long break. It seems that SBC and I had a bit of a disagreement. You see, I thought that I should be able to connect to the internet with my DSL connection. They thought otherwise.

I hate Southwestern Bell, ahem, SBC… and all their price gouging and poor service… But I care for TimeWarner’s services and gouging even less… So it’ll be nice to see some competition between these guys… Although, they can deal with the State, not the local areas… And thus just grow in to a bigger suite. Next thing you know, SBC will own the power lines and water systems.

The current SBC DSL has some "issues". Their DNS servers have somewhat been flaky. There has be times when name resolution will just fail for no apparent reason, and thus kicking people off the system, drop my sessions, etc.

If at first you don’t succeed…. It took three tries but Telco giants SBC and Verizon have finally been successful at getting legislation though the Texas legislature that will create a statewide franchise of IPTV triple-play television services delivered by Telcos.

I have an SBC DSL package that is supposed to be giving me download speeds of 1.5 Mbps-3.0 Mbps, and upload speeds of 384 Kbps-512 Kbps. I've run the speed tests a couple of times this morning and always getting something like 1.1 Mbps for downloading, and 315 Kpbs for upload.

While telecom giants SBC Communications and Verizon Communications are already beginning to roll out IPTV services, they're also asking Congress to streamline the rules that forced cable TV carriers to negotiate franchise agreements with every local government where they provided service. The large telecom carriers faced heavy regulation in the traditional telephone market when they were the only providers, they argue, but when Congress opened up voice calls to competition in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, competing carriers had fewer regulations.

Of course those crystalline definitions provide no real guidance as to how cable internet is to be regulated at all--hence the controversy. Internet service provided by dial-up or DSL is regulated as a common carrier, meaning the the phone company who owns the lines going into your house (and they do), must permit other companies to use those lines for a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. That means if your phone lines in your house were laid by Verizon, you have the option as a consumer to use MCI or SBC or any other telephone company for your phone and/or DSL connection and Verizon must honor that choice. Again, this is all because dia-up and DSL use phone lines, which are regulated as a telecommunications service.

I just made the switch from Time Warner cable internet to SBC DSL. I got a great deal at 14.95 a month. This gives me an extra $20/mo.

The WSJ says, "The question Wall Street is asking is whether Comcast will act as part of a cable-industry consortium, or strike an alliance of its own. The most attractive partner may be T-Mobile USA Inc., which isn't a direct threat to Comcast in the way that SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have become.

Friday's WSJ ran a front-page story on how difficult it may turn for new companies to make money in WiFi. Why? he quickness of the market dominant tech companies to respond.In the prior high-tech cycles, the entrenched tech leaders were often overtaken by the little furry mammal companies. This time the entrenched leaders have stolen from the VC playbook and quickly jumped into the WiFi arena. Cisco bought two leading compaes, Aeronet (Clarity) and Linksys, and dominates the access-point market. Intel is commoditizing WiFi chips so rapidly...

Despite Washington's desire to bring new competitors to TV and telephone services, the regulatory morass isn't about to be cleared up quickly. Last week, the FCC turned down SBC's request for blanket exemption from "common-carrier," or telephone-style, rules that govern a wide range of broadband services, including video. SBC plans to spend $7 billion over the next three years to upgrade its network called Project Lightspeed.

AOL is now offering free web-based email for AOL Instant Messenger users. And it'll have 2GB of storage. It's about time. The decision is part of AOL's broader strategy to integrate communication channels (AIM, email, voicemail, SMS, etc.). AOL's decision is great news for a friend - who has continued to pay AOL monthly fees (even though she has Yahoo! SBC DSL) solely because her email address is her "first name"@aol.com.

Before there was the web, Yahoo or Google, the only search available to the masses was 411. Enough, to inspire colloquialism, “have you done a 411 on so and so?” Well, that boring old search is still generating more dollars than all search companies. In 2010, it is going to be a $11.4 billion business, up 42% from 2005. Makes you wonder, what people are doing with all the free information available on the web. U.S. consumers call 411 an average of 35 times per year, which translates to 6.5 billion directory assistance phone number look-ups,...

We are not at a tipping point in how we make and pay for phone calls; we are at a FLIPPING point. The AT&T band, if there still were one, would be playing “The World Turned Upside Down” like General Cornwallis’s band at Yorktown as the British surrendered their arms to the rag-tag colonials. I’m not talking about SBC buying AT&T: that’s just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I’m talking about real change.

Not long ago, the first pay phone was added to the California State Parks system as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Today California State Parks and SBC Communications are taking it one step further by offering visitors wireless Internet access. In an effort to provide travelers with a way to “keep-in-touch” on vacation, California State Parks will offer high-speed wireless Internet access, also known as Wi-Fi to the picnic tables, RV spaces and cabins of 85 California state parks. San Elijo State...

The cities of Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles in the state of Illinois, USA are at loggerheads with Comcast (the cable company) and SBC (the phone company) over plans to build a FTTH network serving these communities. The munis claim that the carriers are charging exorbitant rates for services, but so far 2 referendums have failed. The fight goes on. Read all about it here.

San Francisco Chronicle: "In the coming weeks, the city of San Francisco will request proposals for a plan for a community broadband network -- a network that can provide the people of San Francisco a blisteringly fast connection to the Internet at a fraction of the cost of Comcast and SBC."

The title for this post is taken from a quote in an ad for telecomfortexas.com, which encourages us Texans to question telecom competition. Oh yeah, competition is bad, monopolies good, right? Um, not so much. The ad shows a subscript at the bottom of the screen saying, paid for by SBC. What a surprise! SBC loves Rep. King's bill, we know this.

In 2002 a conversation regarding VoIP would go like this: VoIP? What’s that? Enter 2005 and now the world can't seem to get enough. Large cable companies such as Time Warner and Cox Communications are reporting an incredible increase in VoIP services to their customers. It was only a matter of time before companies that sell the broadband signal VoIP runs on would implement a packaged plan. For a flat monthly fee with one company, you can get high speed internet, TV, and voice communication for cheaper than SBC, Verizon,...