Stupid ISP Tricks
So, everything was wonderful when I booted up on the 15th. Bill was still being annoying about Service Pack 3, but went away when you ignored him, and I signed on to the ‘Net.
I did a scan of the news, then check comments, noting that Kryten was still being thrown into moderation on a random basis, something weird from the recent upgrade, and then read a few blogs before venturing out to pick up some plumbing parts to repair a drain I had torn apart to get at the “clog from hell”.
After finishing the plumbing and take care of the feral cats I came back to start answering comments before continuing to work on my “real job”.
Nothing, Nada, Nil. The Internet didn’t exist, I didn’t exist, isolation had returned to the Florida Panhandle.
I went through the standard power down and restart cycle, ran diagnostics, nudged various pieces of equipment, but the connection refused to work. Nothing for it but to call technical support.
After punching in my line identifier I received a recorded message saying there was trouble for users in Coral Gables. As I am hundreds of miles across the Gulf from Coral Gables I continued through the menu maze to finally speak to a human.
The human confirmed that I definitely couldn’t get on the Internet because of the outage in Coral Gables and it might be fixed in about 24 hours.
OK, I am literally surrounded by fiber optic cable. Within a block of my house Bubba and a backhoe could dig up multiple fiber cables, no matter which street he was digging along. Not only can I not get access to any of this fiber, my DSL connection is routed down to bloody Coral Gables before I can access the Internet. This is the “free market” “private enterprise” in action. You are required to choose between the crummy service of the cable company or the crummy service of the telephone company who both have magically decided to charge exactly the same price for their crummy service.
8 comments
I can only get the slowest-speed DSL at my apartment due to its distance from the CO, the one that’s barely faster than a modem and not fast enough even to view YouTube videos, so Compost pretty much has a monopoly here. So they charge $20/month more for Internet service here than they charge just a few blocks away where high-speed DSL is available. Sigh. Some “free market”.
– Badtux the Composting Penguin
Competition in the broadband market is a myth. I think one of the reasons they won’t sell fiber locally, is that they don’t want competition in the market.
Bell South does the same thing in non-cable areas, jacking the price because they can.
Sorry to hear about your troubles m8, and I do share the pain!
And you are right about the myth! It’s the same here… We supposedly have a hundred ISP’s to choose from, including a half dozen or so major *carriers*. But the reality is, and everyone knows, there is only Telstra. They own all the infrastructure including the exchanges. All others (even the biggies like Primus, Optus etc) all have to wholesale off Tesltra. and Telstra LOVE to play stupid games! They are regularly fined millions for some shenanigans by the ACCC, and just shrug and raise prices or cut services. The really insane thing si, my ISP (who is very good BTW) wholesales off Optus, who wholesale off Tesltra. But my ISP get’s a much better deal off Optus than wholesaling directly off Tesltra! How does that add up? Optus is a huge company with a lot of overheads, and they constantly post big profits. And they also complain that Telstra isn’t giving them a fair deal on wholesale (in fact, Telsta was fined a couple years ago for that). *shrug* I dunno! Optus have rolled out their own cable network for Internet & TV, but the coverage is limited to the major cities and isn’t that cheap anyway, and they still have to go through Telsta owned national gateways. 🙂
What pisses me off is that we still have to pay a monthly phone line rental to Telstra no matter who we use even though most of that infrastructure has been in place almost a century and was paid for a hundred times by now! Though, most large resellers can get a better deal. Telstra charge $30/Mth, my ISP charges $28/Mth. At least we don’t have timed local calls… yet! Telstra has been fighting for that for years, they almost got it under Howard (which I believe is one reason Howard was finally torpedoed! Enlightened self-interest is a wonderful motivator at times).
The crooks are definitely running things. As far as I am concerned, the criminal extortionists have simple found a way of legalizing extortion and fraud by becoming Corp Execs.
The “big guys” get together and make deals that ensure that no matter what, one of them will get the business. They run ads to make it look like competition, but when you run the numbers beyond six months, there isn’t a dimes worth of difference, no matter who you deal with.
If we could get a couple more satellites up, I would switch to a satellite system. Currently they have over sold their capacity, so through put suffers. The latency makes satellite a problem for gamers and VOIP connections, but it would be fine for me.
The names change, but the game is the same – monopoly.
Wahooo! The news today (speaking of Telstra!) Is GOOD!! I’m doing the ‘happy dance’ here! LOL
LOL Nobody likes Telstra! From the Fed Gov, to the employees, to the customers! 😀
I think i’m starting to love our new Gov. 😉
Die Telstra… DIE!!!
There are probably a couple of things in play on this: obviously acting like jerks because you are essentially a monopoly is one, but the Rudd government may have also decided, after looking at the mess in the US, that isn’t a good idea to have businesses that are “too big to fail”.
ATT pulled the same crap and it was broken up, but the Hedgemony has allowed it to reform. The media conglomerates are heading down the same path to monopoly. This is why you need anti-trust laws, because without them you end up with monopolies, or corporations “that are too big to fail”. Failing is exactly what the “invisible hand” of the market is all about. When these huge companies are protected from risk, the market does not work.
i liked bellsouth after att had broken up. i even liked att back then. now i hate them both, which is convenient, since i can hate two corporations for the price of one.
They have all turned into money grubbing, worthless monopolies that you have to deal with, and they know it. They don’t compete, and have no intention of competing.