Verizon rant

[nbodley at speakeasy.net (Nicholas Bodley)]

On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:23:27 -0400, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote:

> If you want DSL, the physical cable belongs to Verizon in our area.

And the Central Offices, too.

[Verizon tale]

A few years ago, after I got over my utter astonishment from learning that  
DSL was technically workable (I'm a retired electronic tech), I considered  
getting it; Telocity looked nice, and then DirecTV bought it. I signed up  
with D.TV, and theirs was a class act; the bridge was made in USA! Well,  
D.TV decided to quit ADSL (perhaps not enough profit?), and I became a  
"Direct Switch" customer. Did research at Broadbandreports.com (iirc);  
(was DSLReports.com, iirc), and chose Speakeasy.

{From not-quite reliable recollection: }
Late in the process of provisioning, I got a sales pitch from Verizon, and  
back then, I had no particular good news about V., but V. had offered ADSL  
a few years ago, in the Greater Boston Area (no doubt, selected  
communities), and got an unexpectedly "good" response; they had far more  
interest than they could handle. Matters became so bad that they lost a  
class-action lawsuit. Nobody at Verizon will be honest about that; some  
Verizon cust. svce. people are probably honest when they say they never  
heard of it.

DirecTV had had a bad time with third-party tech support, and was very  
open and honest about it. Believe me, such candor makes me really want to  
sign up with an outfit, if the rest seems reasonable! So true, when  
<politics> lying is exalted as a political tool </politics>.

OK: Back to the sales pitch (and better memory): Mentioned the c.a.  
lawsuit, and got the usual quasi-denial or such. Said I had selected my  
provider carefully, and was pretty far along in the process. Saleman tried  
hard to make me change to Verizon. His last words carried such a clear  
implication by tone of voice, etc. (one could never prove it legally) but  
the gist was utterly obvious: "{You'll be sorry!}"

Covad was in the loop, handling the provisioning, but I *think* the actual  
physical wire change at the C.O. was done by Verizon techs., for Covad.  
(Daily, I'd pick up the handset and dial 1 to break dial tone, expecting  
random noise, but -- silence. I didn't know that before the first synch.  
attempt, the DSL card at the C.O. doesn't send you any DSL signal at all.  
Not important, though.) When I came to my senses, and tried to synch.,  
both ends saw each other, but no success. Repeated -- daily. Finally,  
called Speakeasy (again), and a new fellow took over my account. I'm  
solidly convinced that he had a personal interest in seeing me become up  
and running.

What he said, and to whom, I have no idea, but after many hours, I had  
successful synch. attempt. Joy!

Speakeasy had logged every synch. attempt; interesting. Apparently rare,  
but I was given the voice number to reach Covad, just in case. Customer  
normally never speaks to Covad. (I had mis-typed "Cisco" for "Covad"; hope  
I fixed all. Opera's e-mail composer is weird -- Very nice for Unicode,  
but not even a basic text editor...)

As well, Speakeasy had provided a stage-by-stage Web-page update on my  
provisioning. They also gave me a temp. dialup number that didn't work  
worth a darn; I still had my shell acc't. at TheWorld.

Can't prove anything, but I *suspect* that Verizon techs had intentionally  
mis-connected my line to the DSL cage (or terminal block?). They might  
have left tip open, or ring open, or (less likely!) shunted tip and ring  
with a capacitor.

Since then, Speakeasy has been almost as reliable* as the local electric  
utility.  They are quite geek-friendly; not the cheapest, but my point of  
view is that they will have enough income to be around in 5 years. They  
were one of the first to offer (apparently superior QoS) VoIP, and very  
early offered "geographical" 911 service. Whether Verizon is running DSL  
service as a loss leader, I don't know.  (QoS: quality of service)    
*E-mail notices of very infrequent network maint/upgrades; re-synch.  
needed maybe twice a year, on average, if that. (I keep my bridge up 24/7.)

I have always asked who provides DSL when I learn of someone else in this  
area who has it. Verizon seems to be about the only one. These people also  
report good service. They probably all have DHCP; mine is fixed.

A while ago, my loop to the CO (phone line) became intermittently quite  
noisy; had "frying", snap, crackle, and pop. Might have been useful to  
record for a sound effects library. DSL died. Verizon did 2 or 3 "truck  
rolls", and wasn't having much luck. (They did respond to the trouble call  
in good time.) Rather than locate the problem, which would have been  
time-consuming and costly, they cut in a new pair, and Happiness Returned.  
Been fine, ever since.

Btw, Verizon's Fios seems quite interesting. Almost fiber-to-the-curb. As  
I understand it, between your residence (and small business, I guess)  
there's still a copper-wire pair, but it's so short that max. data rates  
are more like what a friend says is typical in Sweden (30 Mb/s).

-- 
Nicholas Bodley  /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA")
The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath
Hurricanes are a bad way to learn the
  first letters of the Greek alphabet.
Happiness is a full Quabbin.