photo credit: Will Foster
Archive for February, 2008
Did Vonage steal a phone number from a Packet8 subscriber?
Russell Shaw of ZDnet received an e-mail from a Packet8 customer (note, a Packet8 customer, not a Vonage customer). Here’s the gist of it:
I don’t subscribe to Vonage, I use Packet8 for my VOIP. Somehow Vonage assigned my Packet8 phone no. to one of their new customers. I called Vonage and they told me that since they had a request to “port” the number, they did it.
I called their customer that received my phone # and advised them that Packet8 was in the process of taking back the #. They advised me that they didn’t ask for the #, Vonage gave them a random phone #. Today is Wednesday. I have been without phone service since Monday. When I called Vonage today, the rep advised me that they won’t be taking any further action on the matter.
Full story here:
Reader: Vonage assigned my Packet8 number, and I’m not even a Vonage customer | IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband | ZDNet.com
Hey Vonage, assuming this reader is correct, you screwed up! Saying you won’t be taking any further action on the matter is entirely the wrong answer. More than likely, he’s not just going to go away – he wants his phone number back! And if you won’t give it to him, he might contact the F.C.C. or the Better Business Bureau, and eventually you may wind up being forced to give the number back, and then your customer (the one you gave the number to) is going to be unhappy. So why not admit you screwed up, and fix the problem while your customer hasn’t yet developed any emotional attachment to the number? You might have to give your customer a month of free service or something in compensation for the inconvenience, but wouldn’t that be better than getting called out as a bunch of screwups in various blogs and online forums?
Vonage can run all the cute TV ads they want, but when people go online to research their service and see things like this, that gives them a reason to consider Vonage competitors (as well they should – in my humble opinion, there are better deals in VoIP service to be found, whether you are shopping on price or on quality of service). Vonage needs to fix this problem post haste!
About VoIP: 911 Bill Passed by U.S. Senate
Looks like this is all but a done deal, for better or worse (better because VoIP companies will now have the legal right to have access to 911 answering centers, worse because it’s probably going to cost them, and that cost will be passed on to the customer, and I’ll bet most of that money will somehow wind up in the pockets of the incumbent telcos):
The Senate recently approved a bill requiring VoIP providers to ensure 911 access to customers. S428, the IP-Enabled Voice Communications and Public Safety Act, gives VoIP interconnection access just like the traditional phone companies have—making sure that 911 calls made over VoIP lines will reach a live operator every time.
Full story here:
911 Bill Passed by U.S. Senate | About VoIP
More on the Cato Institute hypocrites
Just a small update to my article on the Cato Institute hypocrites – you know, the folks who proclaim to be for individual liberty, but not when it comes to freedom of speech by one of their employees, even when he’s not speaking in an official capacity nor about any matter of which the Cato Institute has previously expressed any interest. Mr. Armentano has now written an article giving his side of the story:
Dom Armentano: UFOs and censorship — why Cato Institute dumped me
Telecom IS one of the areas in which the Cato Institute has weighed in with their opinions, and you get one guess whose side they are usually on. The next time they deem themselves worthy to pontificate about some matter, I hope someone reminds them that when you act in a manner that’s apparently contrary to your core principles, you shouldn’t expect people to take you seriously.
By the way, and for the record, I believe that Mr. Armentano is right on with regard to his views on UFO’s. I’ve never seen one, I don’t know what they are, I don’t know where they come from, and I’m certainly not so naive as to believe that if they are piloted by intelligent beings from elsewhere, those beings would necessarily tell the truth about their origins even if they did decide to land at the United Nations (however, it would be really interesting to compare their DNA to human DNA, and I suspect that’s exactly what some people fear would happen). But I do believe that the public deserves to be told the truth about what we know so far, and not be fed ridiculous stories about weather balloons and swamp gas (the latter is a local reference that will doubtless stir up memories for some southeast Michigan residents). I, for one, am so sick of our government lying to us about everything under the sun (and maybe things on the other side of it as well).
I have read a few articles and heard some comments that suggest that if the full truth ever comes out, a lot of current and former government officials could go to jail (in part because of the way certain “recovered technologies” were allegedly handed over to major corporations). I don’t know if there’s any truth to that either, but I believe that those who have a story to tell should be allowed to tell it, without being penalized for doing so. One of the big reasons that this country is in such a mess is that instead of putting a high value on telling the truth – a core value that most of us teach our children – we tend to penalize people who tell “the truth, and nothing but the truth” (even if it’s the truth as they perceive it) in any setting outside of a court of law or a Congressional investigation. In line with the topic of this blog, I wish someone would blow the whistle on how telecom-related legislation is actually created – I think I have a pretty good idea already, but I have no proof. It would be a lot more effective if, say, a former state legislator would go on the record about exactly how it came about that certain provisions got into the Michigan Telecommunications Act. But honestly, I expect we’ll see full disclosure on UFO’s before we’ll see that happen (which is to say, I’m not holding my breath).
Another reason Michigan is the armpit of the nation
There are days (like, most of the time) when I really hate living in Michigan, not because of the climate or the people or anything like that, but because our lawmakers are the most f**ked up bunch of legislators in the entire civilized world, or at least they come off that way. The problem is that they’ll make a law favoring any corporation or special interest group that comes along, as long as said entity throws enough money into their re-election fund (directly or indirectly), and beyond that they are too damn lazy to really understand the laws they are passing (at least that’s my theory; the alternative would be to think they just don’t give a damn about the people they are supposed to represent). Thus we are stuck with travesties such as compulsory no-fault auto insurance, which makes our car insurance rates higher than just about anyplace else in the nation. Anyway, it’s always such fun to read an article that points to Michigan as an example of what not to do, which brings me to the point of this mini-tirade:
Excerpts from an article entitled, “When Did You Become Someone Else’s Intellectual Property?” by Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital:
Silicon Valley represents America’s model of innovation. Because employee non-compete clauses are not enforceable in California, workers are free to pursue new ideas and opportunities, and the employer’s legitimate intellectual property rights are still protected by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and non-solicitation agreements (NSAs).
Yet Massachusetts, New York and Michigan are among dozens of other states that still enforce non-compete clauses. This isn’t just a philosophical debate. We have just to look to Michigan in 1985, when it made non-compete agreements enforceable again after 80 years. The result: Overall job mobility was immediately cut by 20 percent. In specialized technical fields, the damage was even more acute.
And then we get to the real issue here:
The non-compete makes the employee the company’s property for the term of the agreement, which typically extends far past the employee’s last day on the job. It essentially makes the claim that “Because you’re highly skilled, you belong to us even after you don’t work for us any more.”
This puts employees who choose to leave in an outrageous situation. They were paid during the term of their employment for work performed. Since they have left the company, they are no longer being paid. Yet the company still asserts a right of ownership of them as workers, simply because they used to pay them.
And yet, for whatever reason, our Michigan legislators apparently thought this was a good idea. Just like they thought the Single Business Tax was a good idea.
By the way, it’s not just people in technical jobs that are affected by this. I know of a guy who worked as a manager in a restaurant chain who, I was told, could not work at any other restaurant within 100 miles of his home town after he left his former position, for something like a year. And we are not even talking a fancy restaurant here – we’re talking a national chain of family-style restaurants (one that’s now in Chapter 11 – serves them right in my opinion!).
In my opinion it’s high time that the Legislature hired someone to go through all of Michigan’s laws and find the ones that are outdated, no longer relevant, detrimental to Michigan’s citizens, and unique to Michigan, and put the entire batch into sunset legislation. Then, if anyone can make a case for keeping a particular law, the legislature will still have the option to extend it. Those that no one cares about will die a merciful death, but it will force the legislature to actively take a look at the rest and ask why Michigan is out of step with the times and/or the rest of the nation. In a few cases there may actually be a good reason for it, but in many cases it’s because our legislators were listening to the lobbyists and the big corporations. I would add, “when they should have been listening to the people” but sometimes the public can be misled, too – if I recall correctly, the people actually voted on no-fault insurance (after the legislature put it on the ballot), but I just might be mistaken about that.
And one other thing I would support is a part-time legislature. Several others states don’t feel the need to have their legislature on a full-time payroll, and given the financial crisis that Michigan is in right now, wouldn’t it make sense to put the people who got us into this mess into semi-retirement? There’s a whole lot of reasons that part-time legislatures make sense, but since this isn’t a political blog, I won’t expound on that further.
Oh, and for those who wonder how this relates to the topic of this blog, I have but one word (an acronym, actually): PBLES. Another absurd creation by a bunch of legislators that couldn’t be bothered to write sane legislation, or even copy what other states have done (and don’t even get me started on the virtual NXX mess).
Be sure to go read the full article that I referenced above, it’s fairly short and well worth the time it takes you to read it! Note: If you have a problem with the site not fully loading (or constantly reloading), try disabling Javascript. And you may also want to visit the Alliance for Open Competition website.
Did Comcast Hire Public Stand-ins For Neutrality Hearing? – Napping, disinterested attendees mysteriously appear, cheer Comcast – dslreports.com
You’ve heard of a denial-of-service attack – read the following and see if it appears to you as though Comcast might have taken the same principle and applied it to citizen participation. Or, if you’re of my parents’ generation, see if this reminds you at all of the days when union organizers (or opponents) would fill a meeting with a bunch of paid shills:
The Save The Internet Coalition, a coalition of consumer advocates like the Consumers Union authors of Consumer Reports and the Free Press, is claiming that Comcast bussed in a large number of disinterested individuals to yesterday’s public FCC hearing at Harvard on network neutrality and traffic shaping. The group is claiming Comcast paid these individuals so those seats would not be filled with interested, question-asking participants. Many didn’t even know what the meeting was about …..
Full article here:
Did Comcast Hire Public Stand-ins For Neutrality Hearing? – Napping, disinterested attendees mysteriously appear, cheer Comcast – dslreports.com
The real question is, are the FCC Commissioners so isolated from reality that they can’t figure out that this sort of thing might be happening right under their noses? I mean, if we assume that the critics have the right take on this, it would seem to me that once the Commission discovers that Comcast apparently believes their case is so weak that they dare not allow opponents to fairly participate in the process, that would work against them. I might be wrong, but to me this sort of seems like an admission that if the hearings are conducted in a fair and open manner, Comcast doesn’t believe their position will be the one with which the FCC sides. But then, that (and everything in this article other than the article excerpt and link) is just my personal take on what I’ve read in the linked article. As always, feel free to leave a comment if you disagree.
This video may do to the wind energy industry what the Hindenburg disaster newsreel did to air travel via Zeppelin
Remember the film of the Hindenburg disaster? Even if you are much too young to have been alive when it happened, you’ve doubtless seen the dramatic (and tragic) newsreel footage. After seeing those images in their local theaters (back in the days before television, when you got to see the news in motion pictures before you saw the feature film), an awful lot of people decided that there was no way in hell they wanted to travel by Zeppelin. And, since there were alternatives (planes, which might crash but at least didn’t put one in the position of having to choose between being burned alive or jumping to one’s death), the Zeppelin all but disappeared. Which, in a way, is a real shame, because it was probably a much more elegant way to travel (no, I am not old enough to remember).
Anyway, my point is that a dramatic video can bring out the worst in people’s fears. Today we have companies wanting to put wind turbines along the shore of Lake Michigan, and of course there is local opposition. Well, just wait until that opposition sees this video from Denmark:
As mentioned in a comment below, Clear Channel seems to have found another one that’s arguably even better than the one I posted above:
An article about this incident (and another – apparently this has happened twice now) can be found here:
jp.dk – Minister demands explanation for windmill collapse
Now, I’m not saying that wind power is totally dead – I’d love to see any type of energy production developed that doesn’t involve the use of petroleum or other fossil fuels. But, I have to tell you, I’d rather live next to a nuclear power plant than in the shadow of one of these wind turbines (not that living next to either would be my first choice). I can see all sorts of problems with those massive blades whirling in the wind, and the video just confirmed my suspicions that things can go very wrong. This video will probably be played at every local council meeting where the idea of putting wind turbines near residential areas is being explored.
As an aside, why isn’t anyone exploring the use of wave energy in Lake Michigan? On the west side of the lake, we have gentle waves even on days when the wind is relatively calm, and when the wind kicks up a bit there is a massive amount of energy in those waves. And, anything that captures the energy in the waves probably isn’t going to throw huge chunks of metal into someone’s home (I suppose it could happen in a really nasty storm, but the probability is seriously low, and a large log or other chunk of driftwood could probably cause similar damage). I know, there are probably a three or four months where the lake is frozen over to the point that there are no waves, but still, for the other eight or nine months of the year – and particularly during the summer, when air conditioning usage is high – I suspect that a significant amount of power could be derived from wave energy!
Anger: Comcast Dings Your Credit Report For Moving With Their Precious Cable Modem
Another tale of a large corporation that is so disorganized that one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, so the consumer is the one who gets penalized. From The Consumerist:
Comcast told reader Marcus that he could just take his cable modem with him when he moved from the Philadelphia suburbs into the city. Then he checked his credit report and found out that he was a cable modem thief.
Read the article here:
Anger: Comcast Dings Your Credit Report For Moving With Their Precious Cable Modem
Business Week: Consumer Vigilantes
Times must be changing. One of the most frustrating things to me, back in the day when the Public Service Commission hadn’t yet been effectively neutered by lawmakers, was when someone would tell me a tale of woe regarding the phone company, often involving some major billing screw-up. I would advise them to call the PSC, and even give them the toll-free number, and often I’d get a look as if I’d asked them to run for President.
One person even objected to me thusly: “But, I don’t want to get a reputation as a complainer with the phone company!” I couldn’t believe it. My response was that this would be the best thing that could happen, since the complainers were the ones who got their problems resolved and got their service fixed even when everyone else was waiting days for a repair (oh, I could tell you stories!). People had this misguided notion that if they complained too loudly, the phone company would retaliate against them in some way, when in fact the exact opposite was true – the known complainers (and especially the folks who complained via the PSC) got the best service of anyone. Sadly, times have changed, and the phone companies don’t fear the wrath of the PSC the way they used to (and, at least in Michigan, the state legislature is directly responsible for that unfortunate state of affairs). But that does NOT mean that consumers have no clout! What the legislature taketh away, the Internet giveth back. And even Business Week is warning businesses that customers now have a voice – a very loud voice if they choose to use it:
Meet today’s consumer vigilantes. Even if they’re not all wielding hammers, many are arming themselves with video cameras, computer keyboards, and mobile devices to launch their own personal forms of insurrection. Frustrated by the usual fix-it options—obediently waiting on hold with Bangalore, gamely chatting online with a scripted robot—more consumers are rebelling against company-prescribed service channels. After getting nowhere with the call center, they’re sending “e-mail carpet bombs” to the C-suite, cc-ing the top layer of management with their complaints. When all else fails, a plucky few are going straight to the top after uncovering direct numbers to executive customer-service teams not easily found by mere mortals.
Full article here:
Consumer Vigilantes
I must admit, it tickles me to death to see the younger generation finally starting to realize that they don’t just have to take a bunch of crap out of large corporations. A lot of people in my generation, and especially those of my parents’ generation, never quite figured that out – but then, they didn’t have the Internet at their disposal.
New link for “How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home”
The ever-popular guide to repurposing your existing home phone wiring for VoIP service has been moved to a new address:
How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home
The address has been updated in the blogroll (in the right-hand column). As I write this, the old address is offline – I’m not sure what happened, but felt it prudent to move the page just in case the old site doesn’t come back. Edit: It was due to a server move. The old address is working now, but redirecting to the new address.
Fixing the numeric keypad directional keys and Ins/Del on a Mac with PC style keyboard, and more Mac commentary
If you read my earlier post, Seven Mac (OS X 10.5) annoyances, you know that one of my top annoyances was this:
….. This is the one that really bugs me. On a Mac mini, you can plug in any USB keyboard, or just about any keyboard if you get a cheap PS2 to USB adapter (these are easy to find on eBay), so you can still use all those free-after-rebate keyboards you stocked up on several years ago. A minor annoyance, at least for me, is that if I simply reboot the computer without powering it down completely for a few seconds, it doesn’t recognize the keyboard at all. But, that I could live with. What’s really annoying is that the geniuses at Apple decided that the numeric keypad should only be a numeric keypad – the NumLock key is disabled, and there’s no way to get the directional keys or Ins/Del keys to work (please note I’m talking about the keys on the numeric keypad, NOT the keys between the alpha keypad and the numeric keypad, which for the most part work fine though not always exactly as on a PC). The reason this is a HUGE annoyance for me is that I learned to type on a manual typewriter and when I want a number, I use the numbers in the row above the QWERTY line of keys. And for that reason, ever since there have been numeric keypads on keyboards I’ve always released NumLock and used the numeric keypad for navigation only. Do you have any idea how hard it is to unlearn a quarter century of habit? And there is simply no good reason that Apple could not have allowed PC keyboards to work as expected – their OS is built on Unix, after all, and I’m sure that most Unix-based operating systems don’t disable the NumLock (no version of Linux does that to my knowledge). I hope that when whoever made the decision to eliminate the NumLock switch gets old, they are forced to change some longstanding habits just to accommodate some idiot designer’s idea of how things ought to work. Can you tell I’m REALLY PISSED about this one? You would be too, if you hit the wrong key about 300 times a day (in my case it’s the Delete key on the numeric pad), then had to backspace and find the right one. …..
Forgive the quoted rant, but this really annoyed me, and it’s part of a pattern I’ve started to detect with Apple, which annoys me even more (more on that in a minute). But the purpose of this post is to let any of you who may be similarly annoyed about this issue know that there is finally a solution that works great, and is free! Just head on over to the home of KeyRemap4MacBook and download the latest version. Before you install it, make sure you completely uninstall any similar keyboard utilities such as DoubleCommand – if you’ve been using DoubleCommand only to get PC-style home and end keys you won’t need it anymore, because KeyRemap4MacBook can handle that also.
Once you get it installed, go to the System Preferences and click on the KeyRemap4MacBook preference icon (an “alt” key). Once you get to the preference pane, these are the entries you probably want to check:
Of course, you are free to select the options you like, and there are many others available. If you have a weird keyboard, are an Emacs lover, or are fluent in Japanese, there are probably other options here that would be of interest to you. The one that fixes my particular gripe is “Use KeyPad as Arrow”, and the one that eliminates the need for DoubleCommand (for me, anyway) is “Use PC Style Home/End.”
This has totally eliminated my frustration with the Mac keyboard, now let’s hope that Apple doesn’t try to deliberately sabotage this program in a misguided attempt to force people to buy their overpriced keyboards. Why would I even think that they might do such a thing? Well, you see, in the Leopard operating system, Apple introduced a great new feature called Time Machine – great, that is, if you have an external drive that you want to dedicate to Time Machine backups. In Leopard 10.5.1, there were a couple of different ways (freely posted on Mac-related blogs) to let Time Machine use an existing networked external drive for your backups. They involved either running a small utility program called iTimeMachine, or making a one-line tweak from the command line. After that, backups to a share on an external drive somewhere out on your local network worked just great – that is, until Apple pushed out the most recent upgrade to Leopard (version 10.5.2), which for many people (including me) made their old backups inaccessible and prevented the creation of new backups (the backup attempt would fail with the error message, “The backup disk image could not be mounted”).
Strangely, this happened right after Apple announced their own (in my opinion) overpriced backup device called “Time Capsule”, leading at least a few folks to wonder if Apple may be deliberately trying to force users to buy a new backup device (and hoping some will choose Apple’s device because, you know, it’s an “official” Apple product with the Apple logo on it) rather than backing up to their perfectly good existing network storage devices. Of course, you can use Time machine with any external USB drive, you don’t have to buy Time Capsule. And, there is other backup software out there that would let you use an existing networked drive, but Time Machine is really great when it works, and has on more than one occasion let me rescue a file that I had deleted thinking I no longer needed it, only to realize a day or two later that I still did. Now I can no longer do that, until I either shell out for another external hard drive dedicated exclusively to Time Machine backups, or figure out how to trick Time Machine into using my external share again. Apparently, not every Time Machine user had this problem after the Leopard upgrade, but so far every Leopard upgrade has gone badly for me – after the most recent one I got a “blue screen of death” on bootup (just a sky blue screen with no information whatsoever) and had to do what is called an “Archive and Install” to get the system working again.
So if anyone tries to tell you that Mac users don’t ever have the kind of problems that Windows users have, I call bullshit – sure, maybe if you are using Windows Vista or Windows ME you will find Leopard a welcome change, but so far I’ve not been terribly impressed with Leopard. The latest upgrade does seem to have made the system a bit more stable (no more nightly reboots required to clean up memory leaks, or whatever was causing weirdness), but at the cost of the Time Machine problem. So, I’m still rather annoyed with my Mac Mini, but at least I am much less annoyed after finding KeyRemap4MacBook. And admittedly, I’d still much rather have a Mac Mini (even running Leopard) than a Windows Vista machine any day of the week. But that doesn’t mean I’ve joined the ranks of the Mac fanboys who think that Apple can do no wrong. To my way of thinking, on some small scale, Leopard is Apple’s “Vista” – in my limited (one week) experience with Tiger (Leopard’s predecessor), it was a great, stable operating system, and maybe Apple should have built on that instead of releasing Leopard, which has caused so many problems for users. But, all of this is just my opinion – as always, feel free to leave a comment if you disagree.
IP Democracy: Verizon’s War with Cable over VoIP Customers
It appears as though Verizon is resorting to lawsuits, as well as allegedly violating FCC rules, in an attempt to defeat or delay the widespread use of VoIP. It won’t work, of course, and Verizon should beware the unintended consequences, by which I mean increased scrutiny by three-letter Federal agencies. The problem for big telco is that no one will be able to kill VoIP – even if it were to die here in the United States (which could only happen if one of the telco brass somehow managed to become absolute dictator), it would still flourish in other countries around the globe. So, the phone companies are in the unenviable position of playing the role of the buggy whip manufacturers trying to hobble the introduction of the automobile. As IP Democracy reports:
Top telco Verizon has seemingly had enough with cable operators stealing away its local voice customers. Fresh from its VoIP patent lawsuit victory over independent VoIP provider Vonage, Verizon is now flexing its legal muscles to take on the even more threatening cable industry.
Last week the telco filed its second infringement suit against a cable operator, Charter Communications, accusing Charter of violating its VoIP patents. Verizon seeks an injunction plus monetary damages. The Charter suit follows a similar lawsuit Verizon filed against cable operator Cox Communications last month.
Charter and Cox are not, apparently, alone in feeling Verizon’s jab at their VoIP businesses. Three other cable companies, Comcast, Time Warner and Brighthouse Networks, filed a complaint with the FCC yesterday claiming that Verizon is violating the Commission’s rules by dangling retention incentives to landline customers that have already decided to switch to cable digital voice services.
Read the full story here:
IP Democracy – Verizon’s War with Cable over VoIP Customers
If I were a Verizon shareholder (which I am not – I’ve never played the stock market, and have no intention of doing so), I think I’d be a little worried about Verizon taking on big cable. The lawsuit against Vonage was sort of like an elephant taking on an ant, in terms of available legal resources, but taking on the cable industry is a whole other matter.
It’s interesting to me that so far, Verizon apparently hasn’t sued Comcast, but that doesn’t mean that Comcast has no interest in the outcome of the other lawsuits, and if they get involved that could change the balance of power. If the cable industry chooses to unite to fight these lawsuits, under the theory that “you pick on one of my brothers, you take all of us on”, Verizon could suddenly find themselves in a clash of relative equals. Granted that at the moment, the Federal Communications Commission seems to show undue favoritism toward the telephone companies, but that may make the cable companies all the more willing to move the contest into the courts, where the FCC has relatively little influence. And, if this turns into a prolonged fight, it’s quite possible (some would say quite likely) that the makeup of the FCC will change. So, the ultimate outcome of this clash isn’t at all a foregone conclusion. However, in the long run, history never seems to favor the party trying to hold back technology. In the case of a company, even if they don’t cease to exist entirely, they become much less of a force to be reckoned with.
Former GTE North customers: No FiOS for you! (Except in Indiana)
I do not know exactly what GTE North’s footprint used to be prior to its acquisition by Verizon, but if my (admittedly shaky) memory serves me correct, it was the same five states served by Ameritech, plus Kentucky (and possibly portions of western Pennsylvania?). In any case, we know they have over a quarter of a million customers in Michigan, and I believe they have significant holdings in the other states (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky at least – I don’t recall seeing a lot of GTE in Wisconsin so I’m not as sure about GTE’s former presence there offhand). All of this went to Verizon post-merger, and all of it except for Indiana seems to be getting excluded from Verizon’s FiOS deployments.
Today, a post on Verizon’s policy blog, “FiOS Facts: Wrapping Up 2007″, states,
Where is Verizon Deploying its Fiber Network?
- At the end of December 2007, Verizon had passed about 9.3 million homes and businesses in parts of 17 states.
- Verizon expects to continue passing some 3 million premises annually through 2010, when the company expects to have passed about 18 million homes, or over half the homes it serves.
- Verizon has leveraged the versatility and capacity of the fiber network by introducing in 2007 industry-leading synchronous downstream and upstream data rates of up to 20 Megabits per second (Mbps), helping customers engage innovative broadband and video online activities and transfer large files more quickly and efficiently.
- Verizon is investing nearly $23 billion in the FiOS project, between 2004 and 2010. Over the same period, the company expects to save $5 billion because of the avoided maintenance costs and other savings associated with the new fiber plant.
But ominously, in the sidebar to the above text, there is a list of states:
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California |
New York |
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Connecticut |
Oregon |
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Delaware |
Pennsylvania |
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Florida |
Rhode Island |
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Indiana |
South Carolina |
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Maryland |
Texas |
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Massachusetts |
Virginia |
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New Hampshire |
Washington |
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New Jersey |
I don’t know if these are supposed to be the states where FiOS has been deployed, or will be deployed during the above-mentioned expansion. Either way, it certainly appears as though the former GTE North states, other than Indiana, are getting the short end of the fiber, so to speak.
There is a good part to not being the very first to get new technology – by the time it gets to you, it’s been field-tested and you’re not as likely to be stuck with obsolete equipment. But on the other hand, it kind of sucks to be the last to get it, and it sucks even worse if the company has no plans to ever deploy it.
Verizon is in the process of trying to sell all of its exchanges in three northeast states, and many people there are upset about that because they know they will likely not get anything like FiOS from the company that wants to buy those exchanges. A few years ago there were rumors that Verizon was thinking about unloading some or all of their Michigan exchanges, but couldn’t find a buyer willing to pay what they thought those exchanges were worth. Their failure to include most of the former GTE North area in their FiOS deployment list makes me wonder if they are still wanting to exit the area, particularly given that there’s a lot of “outside plant” that is probably left over from the GTE era that is in need of replacement. Rather than stringing new (and expensive) copper, it would seem to make a lot more sense to install FiOS.
I wish Verizon would come clean with their intentions for this area. Why are we in the former GTE North areas dead last (for the most part) to get FiOS?
Scientific American: Do All Companies Have to be Evil?
My view of the world is that the larger a corporation is, the more likely they are to do evil deeds. But after reading this Scientific American article, I’m a little more inclined to think that there may be exceptions to that general principle. The article starts out by making three points:
- People compete against one another to come out on top—and they also collaborate with others to succeed. This yin and yang of our natures expresses itself in the working world today just as it did in our ancestors as they struggled to survive and thrive.
- Studies of how corporations work give us insights into the evolutionary underpinnings of our morality, including concepts such as reciprocity, altruism and fairness.
- Examining the history of two companies, Enron and Google, illuminates the interplay of personal relationships and social institutions in the modern world.
From there they examine the very different corporate culture of two companies, Enron and Google. What I find fascinating is that at one time Enron apparently operated much as Google does today, until Jeffrey Skilling took over as company president. Apparently the person at the top of the company makes a huge difference in the company’s ethics – I guess that should not come as a surprise to me, but I would have still hoped that people would have behaved ethically (and I guess some probably did – they were doubtless the first to lose their jobs). So, this article has implications that go beyond just the comparison of two corporate cultures – it shows how important good leadership is to a company (and doubtless to a nation as well).
I wonder what sort of corporate culture exists at the companies we discuss in this blog, and on similar online forums. Large phone and cable companies seem to be a mixed bag, but there are at least a couple that I suspect have a culture more like Enron (under Skilling) than Google.
It’s a very interesting read…
Do All Companies Have to be Evil?: Scientific American
Alice Hill’s Real Tech News: Intelius Shuts Down Controversial Cell Phone Directory
Here’s some good news for cell phone users:
Only a few months after launching an online cell phone directory with over 90 million numbers, Intelius has shut it down, following an outcry from both the wireless industry as well as consumers.
Full story:
Intelius Shuts Down Controversial Cell Phone Directory – Alice Hill’s Real Tech News – Independent Tech
Apparently, according to the article, Verizon exerted some pressure to help make this happen. I’m glad that Verizon Wireless is concerned about their users’ privacy, but viewed one way they are being a bit hypocritical, in that they still charge their wireline customers an extra monthly charge for an unlisted number, just because they can. Hey Verizon, how about dropping the extra charge for NOT putting your customers’ personal information in your (ever-shrinking) telephone directory? Don’t forget, the customers that leave because they are sick of being nickled-and-dimed to death might go to another wireless carrier or a VoIP service – you have no guarantee that they will remain your customer.
As for Intelius, a Verizon Wireless press release (linked from the above-mentioned article) reports that,
According to its Web site, Seattle-based Intelius says that it will charge consumers a fee to find a number that is “unlisted or unpublished” and will identify a consumer’s wireless service provider. This information is mined from the Internet, personal Web pages and other sources, and has not been authorized by individuals to be sold for this purpose.
Steve Zipperstein, vice president and general counsel of Verizon Wireless, is also quoted as saying,
“Trolling the Internet, using data mining techniques and simply buying lists to create a directory are actions that clearly violate a consumer’s right to privacy”
And the press release states that, “Verizon Wireless intends to take whatever steps might be necessary, including litigation, to protect its customers’ numbers and privacy.”
So this may not be the end of the story. I would just note that if you want to keep a phone number truly private (be it cell phone, VoIP, or unlisted landline), the best advice is to never give it to anyone except people you trust implicitly (and by that I mean close personal friends). Get a different number to give to people you cannot fully trust, perhaps a Grand Central number if you can score an invitation from an existing user, or a temporary number from some other source (use Google to search for “Free Phone Number” or “Free Voicemail”). I’ve also heard of people who will get a Free World Dialup number, then give potential callers one of Telesthetic’s Free Access numbers, plus the Free World Dialup number as the “extension” number. Humans usually have no problem placing a call through if they really need to, but data miners generally can’t or won’t deal with extension numbers. However, you will need broadband service, and a VoIP adapter or a softphone to use Free World Dialup.
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