Some Problems With Opening Up Phone Lines To Competitors
from the not-so-easy dept
As the battle over just how open the phone companies need to be in granting their competitors access to their networks gets louder and louder, both sides are revving up the propaganda machine. The Washington Post has an article showing one of the problems a customer of these new competitor telecom firms can have. It's the story of a bakery that bought cheaper service from a small company who leased their lines (at wholesale prices set by the government) from Verizon. Last week, the phone lines stopped working. The owner of the bakery called the phone company, which is really a bunch of business people who slapped their name on Verizon's services. They don't have any technicians - so they just say that it's a Verizon problem. The baker calls Verizon. Verizon says they won't speak to him, because he's not an actual customer. Both sides are clearly playing the blame game, but if the companies leasing lines aren't willing to handle tech support calls for their customers, than they're clearly not going to stay in business very long.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Time to Socialize Telephones?
1. broadband adoption
2. 3GL cell phones
Consumers are left with a lot of third-rate phone companies that cheat them. Perhaps we should think about nationalizing phone companies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
phone
[ link to this | view in chronology ]