Nofsdad
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 8380
Location: Central CA
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Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2004 4:58 am Post subject: Long Winded and Meaningless Bitch Aboout The Phone Company
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I'm disabled, pretty much a shut-in. I live alone and I depend on the phone and the internet for my contact with the outside world. I'm a happy, upbeat person most of the time, having learned to live with my limitations many years ago.
Up until now, there hadn't been many problems. Lived in town, had dialup but the service was reasonably OK.
But since I moved out of town to a little country place, I'm learning just how important a sense of humor can be when dealing with tech support people who don't even live in the United States much of the time and with those that do but who certainly don't live in the rural areas.
Thursday 3/18/04
In this latest chapter in my long history of trying to take over for Quixote, I decided to ask Pac Bell... pardon me, SBC California... a question or two about their neglected and really sorry phone service in the rural areas of California (and, I at least assume, other states). Since I've moved out to the "back country" (only three miles out of town mind you), the phone service has degraded to the point that I've gone from 40k plus internet connection speeds and no drops to as little as 12.1kps connects with an average of about 24kps with constant drops. I'm also having dropped voice calls on a CORDED telephone. Please understand from the beginning that SBC is my phone company AND my internet provider. There are no third parties here.
Now I kinda sorta understand a slowdown in service based on your distance from the phone company's little switching vault thingy there. When you’re trying to push a signal through several miles of corroded old copper lines, it just stands to reason. It gets to be like shoving a rope into a pipe. There had better not be anything else in there. But we have other modern conveniences out here these days, like natural gas and electricity and flush toilets actually inside the house so why can't we have adequate phone services? Why do we still have the same basic telecommunications infrastructure we had 50 to 60 or more years ago?
It seems that as the town gets bigger and the new subdivisions get farther from the little vault though, their service does not degrade in any manner proportional to the loss of service levels I have incurred. Could it be that the town folks are getting NEW copper lines or even fiber optical cable type lines? I’ll make a bet with you. When this little patch of farmland here is a brand new subdivision in the city of Tulare with 2000 homes, 4000 SUVs and several thousand customers and potential customers on it... well, you can dadgummed well bet the telephones are going to work right then and it's STILL gonna be just as far from here to that little vault thingy as it is today.
My new goal is to find a way to get them to want to provide a decent level of service badly enough to do something before then though.
To that end, I'm attempting to question their practice of charging rural customers the exact same rates as they do their urban and metropolitan customers, even though the degradation of service levels approaches 70-75% in my case, based on the few measurable criteria that I have to work with. The SBC people are going to look you right in the eye and tell you that your service is going to be significantly decreased compared to that enjoyed by other (more important, maybe?) residential customers clustered tightly around their little central facility, that it's just a function of their system based on signal loss in old phone lines and neither you nor they can or will do anything about it. THEN they try to look you in the same eye while they’re telling you that you’re going to have to pay just as much for your service as those customers with the GOOD service do. This ain't a cool thing, folks.
My service is not only markedly inferior, it's downright non-existent throughout most of the day. I have a small reasonably dependable window of opportunity during the wee little hours of the night, when most sensible people are asleep. The rest of the time it's an indefinite maybe and if I do get on, it's usually only after 10 or so tries and I might only be on for 4-5 minutes and the worst part is, it doesn‘t even indicate that I‘ve been dumped. I'm typing away on a three page email and I don't know I've been off line for ten minutes until I hit the send button.
I'm assuming that this time frame is because there are fewer calls jammed onto a system that hasn't seen a significant increase in carrying capacity in the last 50 years or so at two to four in the morning than there are during the other 22 hours a day.
The phone lines in our rural areas were installed some time during the early to mid parts of the last century. As far as I can find out, there has been no significant replacement or upgrade program for these old lines, at least outside the business districts of the incorporated cities, in over 50 years or longer.
SBC has the gall to warn against having "old" phone lines or cords in your house because it will degrade their signal. In fact, it's the first thing that pops up when they start trying to blame the reduced service on something in your own system rather than theirs. If my little 50 feet of cable between my living room jack and the box on the side of the house needs to be new and shiny and free of any trace of corrosion for their system to even work marginally, what do those miles of old copper lines that belong to them, that lie between here and the almighty vault do to my signals? Maybe they need to scrub their lines with a pencil eraser. (one of the instructions I got from them)
For this (this is by SBC's own admission, remember) inferior service I give up a rather large percentage of my very meager fixed income. Seems to me that if my service is going to be downgraded by a certain amount automatically for every ten yards I live from town, I should have my rates downgraded by a proportionate amount. You wouldn't pay the same for half a sack of steer poop for your pansies and nasturtiums as you would for a full sack, now would you? Same thing.
It's been years since I had to sit and watch a connection time out before you even got to your home page. Now, for several days, I've watched this thing sit here for five or ten minutes without receiving a single packet while it's straining and shaking like a dog passing a peach pit trying to get my SBC browser open and my home page downloaded, something that never took more than a few seconds when I was a "townie".
This goes far beyond "inferior" service. This is basically no service at all, with my "rural" fees being used to add new urban and metro customers and upgrade those new subdivisions fiber optics and DSL on a daily basis. If I'm going to be charged the same, I want the same service as everyone else. That ain't too hard to get yourself around now, is it?
Friday 3/19/04
I got an email from sbcytech@sbcglobal.net trying to assist me. Nice young fella but he of course, blamed my problems on everything from my toaster (I don't have a toaster) to a cat walking across the floor in the house next door. You wouldn't believe the stuff in your own living room that causes their internet service not to work. However, he was very careful to make sure he never mentioned that little disclaimer on their own support page. It’s the one down at the bottom in 3-4 point type that's a shade of gray just slightly darker than your screen. The one that says right out that the service goes down as the distance goes up.
He told me a bunch of things to check there in my house, which I dutifully did, even though I knew my connections were good and cables and cords were all brand new industrial grade shielded cables. After that came a list of things to do to my network settings, which I proceeded to do also, even though my network settings were exactly the same network settings I‘d been using in town where my service had been acceptable.
I did 'em all, just like he instructed me to do and right off the bat I noticed a major change in performance. Before, it had either refused to open the browser or if it got the browser open and then it would time out before it loaded my start page. This time there was no slowdown at all. In fact I'd never seen it work so fast, even when I was in town.
It proceeded to connect almost instantly, and in less than a second the SBC browser was open and shining out from my screen, with that little doodad spinning up there in the corner and the little bar on the bottom telling me it was looking for my home page. I swear, I’ve never seen the thing open that fast. Then, just as quick like, I mean in a nanosecond or two, a message popped up on screen telling me that my requested action, which was only the opening of my home page, had been cancelled.
Whoa now, dadgummit! Why would I cancel the opening of my home page when I’d just spent almost three hours trying to do just that!!!! Fact was I hadn’t cancelled it. Now if I didn’t do it, who did? I began to suspect I might not be alone in my little abode here and I proceeded to search the house. Maybe someone has hung himself in my little mobile home a hundred years ago or something and his ghost was still hanging around making sure nobody got to use the internet from here. Hey! It could happen. But I did a careful search, leaving no mattress unturned or closet unopened. No ghost.
So, there's nobody alive or dead around this house but me, but I figured I’d better make dadgummed sure so I even looked again. I mean I knew I didn't cancel it but I wanted to have all the bases covered when I contacted tech support again. See? Right there...#3 on my little list. “Nobody cancelled the dadgummed page load ‘cause there ain‘t nobody else here!".
At least nobody on MY end had cancelled it. That left only SBC itself as the canceller and me as the cancellee in all this. I did reset my networking parameters which got me back to my normal degraded service levels. A little further down on that cancel page it told me to hit the refresh button. I did that, and it then said it couldn't FIND my dadgummed home page. Said it instantaneously too. Heck, it was obvious it couldn’t find my home page BECAUSE IT HADN’T EVEN TAKEN THE DADGUMMED TROUBLE TO LOOK FOR IT!!!
Been doing THAT ever since. Starting about 6 this morning and as of 4:44 this afternoon I have been unable to access SBC directly at all. I did put one over on them though. You see, SBC/Yahoo is my $22 a month ISP. I also have a $10 a month ISP I hadn't cancelled yet. Used it to get on line although it's also very slow and the connection is shaky, it does work. So now I can maybe sometimes use my $10 ISP to access my $22 ISP and get my mail and such. Pretty smart, eh? Slipped right in there and made it by all their little roadblocks. Who would have thought that good old cut rate K-Mart Bluelight would succeed where SBC’s twenty two dollar package would go down like Sheila Jane Stumpmutter back home used to do after a few beers. I sure did get to them, eh... what? Now paying $32 a month for a service everyone else pays $22 for? And they GET decent service levels??? You're sure? Oh. Okay, never mind, folks. (Can we bleep that last part out?)
Saturday 3/20/04
Sure can tell it’s a weekend. I haven’t been able to get past SBC’s switching node all day and I’ve been trying for about six hours now. Every little rug rat in the San Joaquin Valley must be on line chopping each other to bits or ripping each other’s spines out in those sweet, loveable little online children’s games they have on there these days. I’ve been thinking about calling up my grandson and asking if he’d give up his place for a few minutes while I checked my email but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to get on at 12.2kps which is the speed I hit the node with the last time I tried and besides, he‘d probably impale me on a stake in front of his castle. I think we may have lost the boy but I’m not sure yet.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories but you know, I saw two phone company trucks drive past here yesterday after I had started griping publicly about my service. Yes, I see you scoffing but consider this. They haven’t done any significant line work out here in the boonies in decades. Why are they suddenly prowling around out here? Could be they just made a 5 minute inspection trip out here and they’re looking for a tree to take a nap under after telling the home office that everything’s in great shape out here, I guess but I'm gonna keep an eye out just the same.
Well, dear journal, I’m gonna stop here for a bit and give it another shot. I’ll be back after my internet session which I suspect will last just about long enough to realize my home page ain’t coming up which means I’ll be gone about 4 1/2 seconds. I’ll just minimize you down there by the SBC icon.
Hey, I’m back. Got on at a little over 16kps and actually got to read and reply to the one email I had. Good thing I’m not very popular, I guess. Didn’t stop working until I tried to pull up my bank account. Then it dropped me like I was a Big Mac with a cockroach in it. Almost 2:30 in the afternoon, I’ve gotten on once today for about six minutes. Whoopee doo. I’m enthused here.
All kidding aside, the problem is of course, in the phone lines. Even the most brainwashed SBC tech in the world, reading from the world’s greatest tech support cookbook, cannot tell you in one sentence that the cord from your modem to your wall jack has to be in pristine condition for the thing to work but that the ancient, dirty, corroded phone lines that they own with their dust and moisture compromised insulators and connectors buried under an inch or two of bird crap have nothing to do with it.
These are the lines that are often strung within a few feet of high voltage power lines that radiate interference at levels so high they interfere with magnetic processes even on the ground and have been known to cause cancer in laboratory mice. According to SBC a 110v toaster s going to cause enough of a magnetic field in my kitchen to affect my phone cord in my living room.
You can just imagine what those 12000v lines are doing to the cracked and corroded old phone lines on the same dadgummed pole with them in terms of interference.
SBC is a monopoly and as a monopoly, they are not required by even the pressures of competition to provide adequate service. They know there is no other phone company out here and they also know that we can’t get cable or DSL from any source, including them in the case of the latter. If we want internet service at all, it has to go over THEIR phone lines, no matter what shape those lines are in and they know that too. There is no requirement that they measure up to any standard of service. Who else are you going to get?
Until they decide to bring a system that was installed here almost 80 years ago, when only maybe one house in ten even HAD a phone... bring that system into the 21st century, if by no means other than adequate maintenance of the existing system... we're being ripped off, at least here in the rural areas and it's time to make it known that we are fully aware of this rip-off not only to them but to the various state and federal regulatory agencies that grant them their monopolies and their ability to maintain them.
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