Tag: clec

Archaic Telecom

Is Google Voice Net Neutral?

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Not according to, er, AT&T.  “Intellectual contradiction” and “noisome trumpeter” and other mean words were lobbed at Google by AT&T in a letter to the FCC in September 2009.  You get a little dizzy reading this contrivance especially when AT&T is holding this search provider’s feet to the fire by quoting an  FCC policy statement on Internet competition: “consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service.”

Wow, so does that mean AT&T is suggesting that the FCC should be regulating Internet applications to promote competition?

This would all be another day-in-the-life of squabbling service providers—read below the he-says-she-says between AT&T and T-Mobile over competitive pricing for TDM-based backhaul — but this is Google, and Google Voice is now open to the public.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

The AT&T-Verse

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Waves of bad news coming out of AT&T recently stand as a reminder of what life would be like if the crown was restored to this former monarch.

First there was the iPad security escapade wherein a group of hackers fooled a very insecure AT&T web form to display email addresses of iPad owners. Then the pre-order web meltdown in which customers for Apple’s iPhone 4  were faced with an AT&T back-end order entry system that stopped working. Then there’s the customer who received a terse cease-and-desist voicemail response after he emailed AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson to complain about the new caps on data—Zappos’s Tony Hsieh is probably smiling and FedExing a copy of his latest book, Delivering Happiness, to Randall.

Add to this brew the usual problems with AT&T’s 3G coverage (see TechCrunch’s  wireless frustrations) and barely acceptable customer service, and you’ll get a pretty good sense of how telecom was delivered in the Middle Ages (circa 1970s) when AT&T and the Bells were the only games in town.

And to rub salt into our wounds, AT&T is threatening to cut off investment in its U-verse/IPTV cable rollout if the FCC doesn’t reconsider its reclassification of cable broadband as Title II telecommunications.Continue reading