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Thursday, January 19, 2006from Assymetrical Information:Carriers (Verizon, Comcast etc.) are petitioning the government to allow "level of service" agreements for internet traffic. Currently, the government actively regulates media in general, through decency standards on public television, funding public radio, and enforcing a variety of community and public interest standards across media in general. The unregulated internet is an anomaly in the media world and it's not surprising that carriers want that to change.One of the commenters notes that we already have tiered service - dial-up, dsl, etc. And how! Right now I am connected to the internet at... 4800bps! Let's all shout, "Hurray for Verizon! I live in the mountains. It's raining. And the wind blew yesterday afternoon. Which means that for the twentieth or so time this week, my connection ain't for crap. I've called Verizon, but got fed up with listening to the buzzing in my ear while fussing with the goddamn box on the side of the house in the rain to make sure the problem was theirs, not mine. I'm not sure how the problem would be in the house considering that the phone's fine if we've get in a day of decent weather and goes to hell otherwise. But I ran their tests, then hung up by accident and said the hell with it. It's been my experience that if you get a customer service rep on the line from Verizon, he or she is very pleasant and helpful. And can even get a repair team up the hill pretty quickly if it's something affecting multiple homes - even just two or three. But it seems like in the last few years the phone menu trees, etc, have been putting more distance between me and the customer service reps. My favorite is when the phone's out and they helpfully advise that you can get a work order faster by going to verizon.com. This is not, by the way, an extended "let's rip apart Verizon" post. It's just a reminder: When a telco says it needs the government to step in and regulate pricing so that it can deliver its services better, skepticism is in order. 
posted by gbarto at 2:58 AM |
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