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Re: [OM] OT - Phising phone calls

Subject: Re: [OM] OT - Phising phone calls
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:31:34 -0700
On 6/9/2014 9:26 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
Off-Hook Moose wrote:
How can you expect a 'phone company, which is in business to make money, to
maintain a huge, high maintenance installation, that's generating little
income, to a high standard?
I know that you are just seeing if you can ring my number,

Not really.

but I can't let all this slide without a wee bit of challenge.

ALL communications companies, whether "telephone" or "cable-tv" are in
it to make money. What you may not realize is that a telephone company
(proper ILEC and CLEC companies, not VoIP add-on just because we can,
companies) has specific service restoral time requirements.

I'm not referring to specific outages, but to wholesale replacement. There is no way they are going to go through and replace the aging copper infrastructure. Cheaper to send out linemen for each problem. In my case, yes indeed, they were pretty responsive - over and over again. It gets old.

Cable-TV
companies? "We'll be out there next Tuesday or Wednesday or maybe even
Thursday between 8AM and 5PM."

My personal experience was that a pair of professional, competent installers came out promptly and did a good install. Since then, service has been almost perfectly reliable. Once in a great while, the 'net goes down, but so far, comes back on its own in a few minutes.

I have no idea how prompt their service may be, because I've never needed it. Which would you prefer, prompt service regularly, or no need for service?

The profitability of the phone companies is regulated. Cable-TV
companies? Only for the core TV service.

The copper wire network in our area uses connection blocks that were fine
for their first few years of life. Many decades later, they tend to corrode
and corrode and break the wires. If you nag them, old school linemen will
come out, find and fix the problem. But it will deteriorate again, soon
enough. Even DSL doesn't get much faster than your dial-up. (OMG!!! You are
still using dial-up???)
The connection blocks are subject to the local soil and air
conditions, but are generally designed for a 25+ year service life.
We're looking at 40-50 service life in some cases. Actually, except
for environmental concerns, corrosion rarely occurs on healthy
connections that have properly loads on them and correct grounding.

Blah, blah, blah ... Of course ours here are over, way, way over, 25 years old. Generalizations are fine. but I've had at least three linemen tell me that the particular connection blocks in my area are just bad, corrode and cause corrosion in the wires. More than once, I've been told that the wire broke at the block, and was just resting against it, hence the noisy, in and out connection.

...

DSL not much faster than your dial-up?

I didn't say that, that was Chris T. I was the one amazed he was using dial-up.

Maybe your DSL connection in
your neighborhood, which is probably 3+ cable miles from the serving
device, but that's certainly not the norm.

I doubt I'm that far. Whatever, I had a lineman (old school, oldish guy) out to get it going, yet again, bad connections on tow poles, then a tech (young, Asian, spiky hair) came and tested the line with his specialty tool. Simply not capable of consistent response above 9600 kbps. Just crap lines.

I'm about 16000 cable feet
from the central office and I'm getting ONLY 5.96 mbps. However,
closer in, and we're providing up to 18 mbps. Let's see, a dial-up
modem is getting 56 kbps. We also have DSL technology, right now, that
provides over 45 mbps and we're lab testing equipment that provides
over 100 mpbs. All over a single twisted pair of copper. The Schnozz
calls BS on the Moose on this point.

You are talking good copper. Ain't happenin' here.

But it doesn't matter, because the cable company has fiber to provide highly
reliable, fast internet and nice, clean VOIP voice.* The 'phone co. will
never replace/upgrade the copper system. They'll bring in fiber too, switch
all land lines to VOIP and recycle the copper.
Unlike the ILEC, the cable company gets to pick and choose where they
deploy their assets. We have no such option and unlike the cable
company, the phone company has to provide to everybody that wants
service, no matter how many miles out in the sticks they live. Cable
companies are notorious for turning down customers. They are also
notorious for service standards that make bankers look like heroes.

I live in the middle of a major metro area, not out in the sticks. Of course ATT can decide when and where they replace copper with fiber. Regulation only says what service they must provide to whom, not how.

My personal experience, over many years and a couple of buyouts is that my local cable people have been as good at service as ATT/SBC/ATT.

Ancient, but up to date, Moose
No, mislead by the slumlords of the telecommunications industry.

Proof is in the pudding, Here, for me, it has not been so. To be clear, I'm only talking internet. We use Dish for TV and cell phones.

The equipment that the telephone industry uses is of an entirely
different grade than what the cable industry usually uses. Granted,
there comes a point where stuff just no longer is reliable and we do
push the equipment as far as we can until we have to replace, but in
most cases, we replace equipment because of bandwidth growth.

It is a mystery to me why ATT has chosen to ignore an area right next to a major University* and leave it languishing. I see the TV ads and regularly get fliers offering their wonderful internet, TV, etc. service. I laugh and throw them away, 'cause they ain't strung no fiber here yet.

I ... What about the stuff your cable tv
operator is installing? Much of it isn't even glass, but plastic.

Pudding, see above. Plastic that is working beats nonexistent glass. Maybe by the time their plastic, if that it is, craps out, ATT will have strung their own fiber.

....

I'm going to tell you a dark little secret of the telecommunications
industry. Your BEST telecommunications services are not in the big
cities, but in the smaller communities far out in "flyover country".
There is no such thing as the "digital divide" in "rural America". The
average person in Iowa (except where served by CenturyLink) has better
broadband and telephone service any most anywhere else in the country.

I believe you. Would you like to take over here?

For one thing, I made sure of it for the nearly 600 communities in
just this one state that I'm personally responsible for. And I'm
responsible for a whole bunch of states from Iowa and Minnesota all
the way to Oregon and Washington.

OK, back to the hold music.

I really wasn't pulling your chain. I was commenting on the realities of my local experience, and betting that there are other pockets that are much the same.

Poorly Wired Moose

* They are trying to catch up with Verizon for cell coverage here by hanging a micro (mini?) antenna on top of the pole practically in my front yard. Time to write my questions and objections, yet again, for the Wednesday public meeting.

--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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