“Frontier didn’t get screwed. The systems stay the same for one year and we gave them an entire IT team to support the backend in the transition. We worked with them for MONTHS before the transition. This is not Verizon’s fault. The reality is that they are using the exact same system we do for FiOS. We just cut the ties in the database so the 2 sides don’t talk. The outages are all on frontier. They got our systems and our people and they still can’t make it work. Vz tried to tell them to convert rather than transition status quo. We even built them a proprietary version of our ordering system. In my mind it was gift wrapped. Interestingly, customers started complaining of slower throughput immediately after Frontier took over… And they are incapable of restoring service… Even though it’s the same people and the same systems.”-end quote
what I just stated above is from a Verizon employee that assisted in the transfer to Frontier so he knows what he’s talking about.
Here’s another post from another Verizon employee :
“The first Frontier purchase in 2009-2010 was relatively smooth because the properties sold were operated as a joint venture for about a year. This gave Frontier time to slowly integrate the newly-acquired properties into their operations so as to minimize disruption.
The 2016 purchase was essentially an immediate conversion. On midnight April 1, the network was cut over from Verizon management and connectivity to Frontier. The connectivity was handled mostly gracefully with central offices maintaining connection to the outside world, but Frontier management systems did not adapt to the sudden influx of heterogeneous elements so well, effectively resulting in bad configs being pushed to individual customers and central office equipment.
There are other aggravating circumstances. The company roughly doubling in size with >10,0000 Verizon employees making the same sudden transition to fundamentally new systems and processes did not help things. Another problem specific to voice is that a large percentage of Verizon fiber customers had migrated to VoIP platforms that Frontier did not have an analogue for (the tiny handful of VoIP fiber customers obtained in 2009-2010 were migrated back to TDM voice). Network management practices had diverged enough in ~7 years that the networks acquired in 2016 were markedly different animals than the 2009-2010 networks. The markets served are also markedly different – Frontier is heavily focused on being a rural to mid-sized city markets; the properties acquired ran the gamut but had an urban focus with different expectations – this may be shading Frontier’s approach to solving the many lingering problems.”
On May 23rd 2016, AT&T has decided that it is not enough that the company is raking $20 billion a year in profits, so they decided to implement usage based billing on all of their services including their sub-par last mile DSL that is inferior to the next generation internet demands.
It is fact that has been well documented and reported and the way that these companies have been lobbying for that to happen is having model bills authored by these companies have written to our legislatures across the country using a secret group called the American Legislative Exchange Council also known as ALEC.
Also, AT&T just recently has successfully lobbied to stop municipal broadband in the state of Tennessee EVEN if their service is lousy, sub-par, and very expensive. As a FORMER AT&T customer of 7 years my last mile DSL went from $25.00 a month to $84.00 on the last two bills before I told them to go to hell. Did I also mention that AT&T also has implemented “usage-based billing” with a cap of 150 gigabytes per month on that sub-par connection which never reached 6 megs by the way, with a charge of $10 for every 50 gigs a subscriber goes over.
AT&T billed me even when I shut off my modem. Their website is so badly designed, difficult to navigate and the so called “usage meter” was inaccessible 95% of the time.
And during the 7 years I was a customer I would call up and ask when AT&T is going to bring U-verse to my area and each time they told me they have no plans to expand that service.
Just curious : how many will take before those supporters of ISPs ripping off people finally spill over when you cannot justify this form of extortion over wireline?
How much longer are we going to continue tolerating this bullshit from ISPs
1. Metered broadband, 2. data caps, 3. high prices for very low unreliable speeds, 4. dropped connections, 5. forced modem rentals, 6. no option to use alternative hardware, 7. proprietary hardware, 8. monopolies, 9. duopolies, 10. the banning of municipal broadband, 11. protectionist laws designed to keep competition out such as google fiber, 12. the taking of taxpayers funds to supposedly help underserved areas, 13. CEOs salaries in the millions versus badly neglected networks
Am I missing anything else?
How much of this bullshit do we need to continue to put up with before we finally as a collective say we have had enough of?
I’d like a refund on the lousy service I received.
AT&T, Comcast and other scumbag ISPs have figured out why spend any money to provide broadband everywhere when it is much cheaper and cost effective to bribe local officials to write protectionist laws and stop any others from bringing better services to unserved or underserved communities, and they do it under the false argument of “state’s rights” using ALEC.
Take a look at this :
»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 590.html
This second article details that the phone companies have manipulated the accounting of lines-in-service to only include a small subset, specifically, basic POTS, plain old telephone service lines, while leaving out that the majority are business broadband and data lines, known as “special access”. Special access are also the wires used to connect the WiFi hot spots and cell sites as almost all wireless selfies or videos end up on one of these wires.
In fact, in 2015, the FCC found that special access services was a $40 billion market—but listed zero access lines. :
These three articles show how Verizon wants to shut off these lines that are very critical to communications infrastructure not just voice, but actually data, alarm systems, banking, ATMS, POS systems…ect using the excuse that no one uses them as landlines anymore.
AT&T has been announcing to the press about fiber deployments, YET Notice that nowhere in any article mentions locations or who ACTUALLY has fiber. Uh-huh. I have a bridge to sell you too.
»/.../C ··· ould-Let...
Here’s a question for Randall Stephenson :
How’s that $65 billion Direct TV acquisition working out for you? Or that data caps scheme you decided to impose on your customers to create value? Or how about that bill you sponsored in Sacramento California where you want your company to walk away from last mile wireline and force people on your sub par wireless expensive capped service that is inferior and cannot deliver streaming services forget 4K? And by the way, where is that gigapower you constantly tell the media about but not many people have?
The California PUC may not allow AT&T to shut off the legacy copper, but AT&T could come back and say “we will sell it” and look at the potential buyers : CenturyLink, Fairpoint, Frontier, Windstream and then there are the smaller ones : Sonic, DSL Extreme, Toast and maybe Earthlink
OR AT&T could spin off its entire wireline into a separate company altogether (from AT&T wireless) and sell it by chunks or as a whole. Plenty of scenarios of how this could play out.
An AT&T CWA employee told me that AT&T is fed up dealing with last mile wireline customers. He is made it very clear to me that they do NOT want the last mile wireline anymore and by 2020 all of it will be sold off. So IT IS happening. I’m hoping it is Frontier or Windstream.
CenturyLink is still dealing with issues associated with the acquisitions of Embark and Qwest. Fairpoint is in talks of a possible sale or buyout OR they could grow with more acquisitions.
»www.wsj.com/articles/fro ··· 23431602
Look at Connecticut for example. It is well known that AT&T (as well as Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobil) still serves that state with cellular wireless service despite AT&T’s sale of their entire wireline operations to Frontier. Former Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter has publicly stated that she and Randall Stephenson negotiated that deal years ago before finally closing at the end of 2014. So the possibility of another deal like this is not far fetched. Remember, Frontier wants these networks because they know that wireless is not a substitute for wireline.
Wilderotter and now the current Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy have also said that AT&T and Verizon are their biggest customers. The MA Bell giants pay Frontier (and other fixed telecom/broadband providers) to use their network as middle mile and backhaul to deliver services.
Stephenson may not have a choice as public officials may force him to sell off the unwanted wireline as a condition of his desire to want a full wireless network at least here in California. The man is many things but one he is not is stupid. Stephenson knows that these copper assets are still worth a lot of money. It would not make financial sense for AT&T to simply shut off the unwanted copper and still hold onto the properties while paying taxes for them. That also does not reflect well on any company’s balance sheet. Either you convert the assets to utilize for something else or transfer them to another company that will make use of them. In these two scenarios either way you come out making a profit. That makes sense even from a business standpoint.
Wait for AT&T to have a big expense from a merger or buying a huge amount of spectrum and they will use Frontier like a “purchase eraser” on a credit card so that they can hide the effect that this has on earnings. Wall Street Analysts fall for it every time, or maybe they think that everyone who lives in an underserved area should move to San Francisco. Frontier wins from this too because they can momentarily look like they aren’t bleeding customers to death by buying a fresh crop of them.
How ironic as there’s another spectrum auction coming up. This is NO coincidence.
Wireless is not and will never be a substitute for wireline. With the rise of more IOT devices and streaming video that are following the footsteps of Netflix not to mention 4K and eventually 8K, there is simply no way that wireless can handle those demands.
»/.../A ··· Attempts...
We need fixed wireline, Period.
So if you don’t want the copper fixed wireline networks anymore, hand the assets over to someone else who does.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by ljnova.
from a bud who works for Verizon in transferring to Frontier:
what I just stated above is from a Verizon employee that assisted in the transfer to Frontier so he knows what he’s talking about.
Here’s another post from another Verizon employee :
“The first Frontier purchase in 2009-2010 was relatively smooth because the properties sold were operated as a joint venture for about a year. This gave Frontier time to slowly integrate the newly-acquired properties into their operations so as to minimize disruption.
The 2016 purchase was essentially an immediate conversion. On midnight April 1, the network was cut over from Verizon management and connectivity to Frontier. The connectivity was handled mostly gracefully with central offices maintaining connection to the outside world, but Frontier management systems did not adapt to the sudden influx of heterogeneous elements so well, effectively resulting in bad configs being pushed to individual customers and central office equipment.
There are other aggravating circumstances. The company roughly doubling in size with >10,0000 Verizon employees making the same sudden transition to fundamentally new systems and processes did not help things. Another problem specific to voice is that a large percentage of Verizon fiber customers had migrated to VoIP platforms that Frontier did not have an analogue for (the tiny handful of VoIP fiber customers obtained in 2009-2010 were migrated back to TDM voice). Network management practices had diverged enough in ~7 years that the networks acquired in 2016 were markedly different animals than the 2009-2010 networks. The markets served are also markedly different – Frontier is heavily focused on being a rural to mid-sized city markets; the properties acquired ran the gamut but had an urban focus with different expectations – this may be shading Frontier’s approach to solving the many lingering problems.”
-end quote
So this is on Frontier’s end.
(untitled comment)
Make money no matter what.
On May 23rd 2016, AT&T has decided that it is not enough that the company is raking $20 billion a year in profits, so they decided to implement usage based billing on all of their services including their sub-par last mile DSL that is inferior to the next generation internet demands.
Karl Bode of www.dslreports.com, Steve Blum of www.tellusventure.com and Phillip Dampier of www.stopthecap.com have documented and reported time and time again that AT&T (and Verizon) wants OUT entirely of the fixed wireline business.
It is fact that has been well documented and reported and the way that these companies have been lobbying for that to happen is having model bills authored by these companies have written to our legislatures across the country using a secret group called the American Legislative Exchange Council also known as ALEC.
Also, AT&T just recently has successfully lobbied to stop municipal broadband in the state of Tennessee EVEN if their service is lousy, sub-par, and very expensive. As a FORMER AT&T customer of 7 years my last mile DSL went from $25.00 a month to $84.00 on the last two bills before I told them to go to hell. Did I also mention that AT&T also has implemented “usage-based billing” with a cap of 150 gigabytes per month on that sub-par connection which never reached 6 megs by the way, with a charge of $10 for every 50 gigs a subscriber goes over.
AT&T billed me even when I shut off my modem. Their website is so badly designed, difficult to navigate and the so called “usage meter” was inaccessible 95% of the time.
And during the 7 years I was a customer I would call up and ask when AT&T is going to bring U-verse to my area and each time they told me they have no plans to expand that service.
Just curious : how many will take before those supporters of ISPs ripping off people finally spill over when you cannot justify this form of extortion over wireline?
How much longer are we going to continue tolerating this bullshit from ISPs
1. Metered broadband,
2. data caps,
3. high prices for very low unreliable speeds,
4. dropped connections,
5. forced modem rentals,
6. no option to use alternative hardware,
7. proprietary hardware,
8. monopolies,
9. duopolies,
10. the banning of municipal broadband,
11. protectionist laws designed to keep competition out such as google fiber,
12. the taking of taxpayers funds to supposedly help underserved areas,
13. CEOs salaries in the millions versus badly neglected networks
Am I missing anything else?
How much of this bullshit do we need to continue to put up with before we finally as a collective say we have had enough of?
I’d like a refund on the lousy service I received.
AT&T, Comcast and other scumbag ISPs have figured out why spend any money to provide broadband everywhere when it is much cheaper and cost effective to bribe local officials to write protectionist laws and stop any others from bringing better services to unserved or underserved communities, and they do it under the false argument of “state’s rights” using ALEC.
Take a look at this :
»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 590.html
This second article details that the phone companies have manipulated the accounting of lines-in-service to only include a small subset, specifically, basic POTS, plain old telephone service lines, while leaving out that the majority are business broadband and data lines, known as “special access”. Special access are also the wires used to connect the WiFi hot spots and cell sites as almost all wireless selfies or videos end up on one of these wires.
In fact, in 2015, the FCC found that special access services was a $40 billion market—but listed zero access lines. :
»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 592.html
»www.huffingtonpost.com/b ··· 370.html
These three articles show how Verizon wants to shut off these lines that are very critical to communications infrastructure not just voice, but actually data, alarm systems, banking, ATMS, POS systems…ect using the excuse that no one uses them as landlines anymore.
AT&T has been announcing to the press about fiber deployments, YET Notice that nowhere in any article mentions locations or who ACTUALLY has fiber. Uh-huh. I have a bridge to sell you too.
»/.../C ··· ould-Let...
Here’s a question for Randall Stephenson :
How’s that $65 billion Direct TV acquisition working out for you?
Or that data caps scheme you decided to impose on your customers to create value?
Or how about that bill you sponsored in Sacramento California where you want your company to walk away from last mile wireline and force people on your sub par wireless expensive capped service that is inferior and cannot deliver streaming services forget 4K?
And by the way, where is that gigapower you constantly tell the media about but not many people have?
The California PUC may not allow AT&T to shut off the legacy copper, but AT&T could come back and say “we will sell it”
and look at the potential buyers : CenturyLink, Fairpoint, Frontier, Windstream
and then there are the smaller ones : Sonic, DSL Extreme, Toast and maybe Earthlink
OR AT&T could spin off its entire wireline into a separate company altogether (from AT&T wireless) and sell it by chunks or as a whole. Plenty of scenarios of how this could play out.
An AT&T CWA employee told me that AT&T is fed up dealing with last mile wireline customers. He is made it very clear to me that they do NOT want the last mile wireline anymore and by 2020 all of it will be sold off. So IT IS happening. I’m hoping it is Frontier or Windstream.
CenturyLink is still dealing with issues associated with the acquisitions of Embark and Qwest. Fairpoint is in talks of a possible sale or buyout OR they could grow with more acquisitions.
»www.wsj.com/articles/fro ··· 23431602
Look at Connecticut for example. It is well known that AT&T (as well as Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobil) still serves that state with cellular wireless service despite AT&T’s sale of their entire wireline operations to Frontier. Former Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter has publicly stated that she and Randall Stephenson negotiated that deal years ago before finally closing at the end of 2014. So the possibility of another deal like this is not far fetched. Remember, Frontier wants these networks because they know that wireless is not a substitute for wireline.
Wilderotter and now the current Frontier CEO Dan McCarthy have also said that AT&T and Verizon are their biggest customers. The MA Bell giants pay Frontier (and other fixed telecom/broadband providers) to use their network as middle mile and backhaul to deliver services.
Stephenson may not have a choice as public officials may force him to sell off the unwanted wireline as a condition of his desire to want a full wireless network at least here in California. The man is many things but one he is not is stupid. Stephenson knows that these copper assets are still worth a lot of money. It would not make financial sense for AT&T to simply shut off the unwanted copper and still hold onto the properties while paying taxes for them. That also does not reflect well on any company’s balance sheet. Either you convert the assets to utilize for something else or transfer them to another company that will make use of them. In these two scenarios either way you come out making a profit. That makes sense
even from a business standpoint.
Wait for AT&T to have a big expense from a merger or buying a huge amount of spectrum and they will use Frontier like a “purchase eraser” on a credit card so that they can hide the effect that this has on earnings. Wall Street Analysts fall for it every time, or maybe they think that everyone who lives in an underserved area should move to San Francisco. Frontier wins from this too because they can momentarily look like they aren’t bleeding customers to death by buying a fresh crop of them.
How ironic as there’s another spectrum auction coming up. This is NO coincidence.
Wireless is not and will never be a substitute for wireline. With the rise of more IOT devices and streaming video that are following the footsteps of Netflix not to mention 4K and eventually 8K, there is simply no way that wireless can handle those demands.
»/.../A ··· Attempts...
We need fixed wireline, Period.
So if you don’t want the copper fixed wireline networks anymore, hand the assets over to someone else who does.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by ljnova.
Submit a story now.