Diana Thibodoux documents Comcast's shoddy work in her rented home.

The city of Savannah, Georgia is at the mercy of Comcast Cable, and city officials and local residents are fed up with high bills, the “don’t care” attitude from customer service, and cable and broadband that fails repeatedly, sometimes extending for weeks.

The fervor came to a head in December when city council had accumulated more than 150 complaints from local residents, deciding public hearings were warranted to deal with the city’s dominant cable company, Comcast.

“Comcast Destroyed My House”

Diana Thibodoux called Comcast to deal with a cable issue in her Ardsley Park home and never expected the service call would turn into an expensive nightmare.

Thibodoux says the Comcast technician who showed up decided on his own to rewire the house for cable and began drilling through brick and expensive plaster, stringing easily visible black coaxial cable along outside walls, inside baseboards and up over doors, all in plain sight.

“My house looks like a frat house,” Thibodoux complained to Comcast officials who were on hand to listen to customer complaints at the first of four public “town hall” meetings.

“I’ve never dealt with a company so incompetent,” another local resident said.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WTOC in Savannah shares the horror story of Diana Thibodoux, who says Comcast destroyed her house thanks to an overzealous, incompetent repairman.  (3 minutes)

At least everyone knows she has cable.

Residents used the public sessions to vent about long hold times which can extend to as much as two hours, poor quality service, and what city officials call the predictable outcome of a company that has “a stranglehold” over Savannah’s cable TV market.

“Comcast has treated Savannah like a third world country for years, delivering the best service to the wealthiest neighborhoods while leaving cable lines dangling on the ground in the areas they don’t care about,” said Stop the Cap! reader Jenny Child, who has kept a folder of papers documenting more than a dozen service calls regarding poor Internet service at her small business.

“If it rains in Savannah, and it does so a lot, our Internet goes out,” Child complains. “We have called and called but the technician shows up when it is bright and sunny and shrugs his shoulders and says there is no problem.”

Child and her two employees now handle their online business activities based on local weather forecasts.

“If the man says we’re getting rain today, we handle our Internet things real quick, because as sure as I’ll be in church on Sunday, we won’t have service after the first drops fall from the sky,” she says.

Child keeps calling Comcast when her Internet service drops out, but long hold times to reach the company’s outsourced-to-India customer service department have cut into her business.

“I can’t be sitting here on hold with Comcast for 45 minutes waiting for some representative’s nails to dry so she can pick up the phone and deal with customers,” Child complains. “It’s the biggest cable company ever, and don’t they own NBC? How many people do they have working there that they can’t answer the phone. Maybe everyone else is calling to complain too.”

Comcast’s Business Broadband Blockade Prompts Whining When Potential Competition Shows Up

Hargray is wiring downtown Savannah with fiber broadband to serve long-neglected area businesses

While fielding complaints from more than 50 local residents at a second meeting held to address complaints, Comcast executives questioned whether the city of Savannah was giving favorable treatment to Hargray, a new entrant pushing to bring 21st century broadband into the city of Savannah for businesses Comcast has refused to serve for years.

Comcast complained they didn’t mind competition, but wanted “a level playing field,” a statement that prompted an immediate and angry response from some members of the city council, who blasted the cable company for its attitude.

Aldermen Tony Thomas, John Hall, and Tom Bordeaux all noted Comcast has steadfastly refused to wire many downtown business buildings for cable broadband service, despite years of requests.  Comcast claimed the relatively low number of customers did not justify the cost to expand the service.

Alderman Tony Thomas has championed the ongoing dispute with Comcast Cable on behalf of local residents.

All three could not understand why Comcast had a sudden urgency to complain about unfair treatment when a competitor sought to provide the service they never did.

“If [Comcast] did not want to offer that service previously and someone else is coming in to provide the service, where is the sticking point?” Thomas said.

Bordeaux was more blunt in his remarks intended for Comcast.

“Tell them to sue us,” he said.

In contrast to service from AT&T and Comcast, which often markets 3-6Mbps broadband in Savannah, Hargray’s fiber broadband project will deliver speeds up to 1Gbps, first to business customers. But the company promises it is considering selling to residential customers as well.

Great Deals, But Only for “Selected Neighborhoods”

As Comcast’s bad press has become fodder for the nightly newscasts on several of the city’s television outlets, Comcast literally took to the streets to try and mitigate their public relations nightmare. In the process, they created a new one.

Councilman Tony Thomas is happy Comcast is approaching upset customers and offering them substantial discounts on their cable bill.  But he’s not happy Comcast is only extending those deals to certain customers, not all.

Thomas wants the deals offered to everyone, something that he says is not happening today.

(Courtesy: Ted Goff/newslettercartoons.com)

Andy Mackie, Comcast’s Vice President of Communications counters, “All they have to do is call 1-800-COMCAST and they will hear the same deals that the same people are getting from those reps going from door to door.”

“Comcast’s attitude in Savannah is see no evil, hear no evil,” says Jeff White, a Comcast customer who has watched the scuffle. “They don’t even admit there is a problem until it runs on the evening news and city council waves 150 complaints they are getting at the camera — the ones Comcast ignored.”

Mackie himself told WJCL-TV, which has covered the dispute with Comcast repeatedly, he was “unaware of the extent of the concerns that our Savannah customers had with us.”

Despite promises to make things right, Alderman Thomas says many complaints are still unresolved.

“We were told that all of those folks had been contacted and that their problems were being worked on. I have since found a few of these people [who] have had no contact whatsoever with Comcast,” Thomas told the TV station.

“Under no circumstances should City Council let the situation with Comcast get pushed under the rug,” one person wrote in the Vox Populi column in the Savannah Morning News. “We the people need help!”

No Help On the Way

Unfortunately for that reader, and other Savannah residents, an attempt by Savannah city officials to attract competing cable service has met with no success and no interest.  Cable operators almost never compete head to head, each respecting the service areas of fellow providers.  Hargray’s interest in Savannah is primarily serving business customers, and the option for municipal service may not be possible much longer if a bill supported by Comcast, SB 313, ever becomes law.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A compilation of news reports from WJCL, WSAV, and WTOC exploring Comcast’s performance problems in the city of Savannah, Georgia.  (15 minutes)

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Georgia's broadband map shows just a smattering of 50Mbps broadband. That is half the speed required to attract new businesses, says the IEDC.

Suffering the Great Recession blues?  As communities continue to face the loss of manufacturing, heavy industry, and textile jobs to overseas outsourcing, local economic development specialists have discovered one of the most effective ways to lure new high-tech industry into areas hard-hit with job losses is the availability of cheap, plentiful, and fast broadband.

• 42% believe that that 1Gbps is the minimum speed needed to lure new businesses.
• 35% believe the minimum must be at least 100Mbps.
• Rural economic developers appear to be well ahead their urban counterparts in the area of planning. 58% of rural respondents either have broadband strategies and tactics worked into their economic development plans or are writing plans with these elements. Only 39% of urban respondents have done the same.
• 92% see no benefit from the FCC’s minimum broadband standard of 4Mbps, defined largely to suit telephone company DSL service common in rural areas.

Why are rural economies benefiting from better broadband planning? Because in the absence of commercial providers willing to provide the service, an increasing number of small towns and cities are building their own municipal networks to get the job done themselves.  Those networks are routinely superior to the facilities provided by most cable and phone companies serving less populated areas.

Community broadband is working in Wilson and Salisbury, N.C., where a transition from a textile/tobacco-based economy into higher-tech knowledge economy jobs required state-of-the-art broadband as a foundation.  Chattanooga, Tenn.-based EPB Fiber has already attracted dot.com giants like Amazon.com, creating hundreds of millions in local investment and thousands of new jobs.  Why Chattanooga?  Gigabit broadband for just a few hundred dollars a month is just one phone call away.

Relying on commercial providers to build 21st century broadband as a platform for economic transformation has delivered uneven results, especially outside of the largest cities. Large cities traditionally get most of the provider’s time, attention, and upgrades.  Smaller, more out of the way places often see little or nothing.

That is why this year’s latest push in Georgia and South Carolina to tie the hands of communities trying to remake themselves with modern broadband is so risky. While AT&T and the cable companies may position their argument as “protecting consumers,” in fact they are only protecting their own interests, even if it means the next Amazon.com distribution facility or Google data center finds a better home somewhere else.

Updated 3:55pm ET: We added a link to the full report, with appreciation to the author.

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Big Telecom to Georgia: Your Improved Community Broadband Bothers Us
2. Community Broadband Works: Knoxville’s High-Tech Jobs Move South For Chattanooga’s Fiber Broadband
3. Alcatel-Lucent Announces VDSL2 Vectoring: 100Mbps on Copper Phone Lines
4. Canada’s Broadband Lag: Canadians Becoming the Guest Workers of the Digital Economy
5. North Carolina Media Review Shines Spotlight on Anti-Community Broadband Legislation

Time Warner Cable’s new TV App for Apple’s iPhone and certain iOS 4.3-capable iPods has arrived with streaming live cable television for authenticated Time Warner Cable subscribers with a cable-TV and broadband account.

Features on TWC TV™ include:

• Interactive program guide (IPG) – up to 7 days of listings. View detailed show descriptions including box art. Option to display “HD only” or “favorites only” by creating a favorite channel list.
• Search – search for programming by title or episode name and filter results by genre
• Set-top box tuning – tap on a network logo or “watch on TV” button within the program description to tune compatible set-top boxes directly to the channel
• DVR management – schedule one-time and series recordings on compatible DVRs directly from the interactive program guide. Tap on the “DVR” button to see a list of all upcoming recordings and make changes or cancel recordings
• Live video streaming of many cable networks

Time Warner wants customers to be so excited, it included a customer poll in its latest newsletter e-mailed to customers, with one notable possible impression left completely off the menu:

You just gotta love it: Time Warner's especially-enthusiastic customer poll can't imagine a possibility that customers might not love their latest app.

Customers who could not find a button to express concerns about the problems they’re experiencing with the app took to the company’s blog instead.  Among the issues raised by subscribers:

• The app does not work on older generation Apple devices that do not support at least iOS v4.3;
• Local channels and certain cable networks are not available for streaming;
• Customers are limited to in-home viewing only;
• The app does not work on jailbroken devices;
• Certain Time Warner-provided set top boxes are reportedly not compatible with TWC TV, a problem that usually manifests as no access to the interactive program guide or DVR settings.

The app is available at no charge from the iTunes or Android store.  Android device owners can expect a live streaming-capable version of TWC TV in the near future.

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Boxee, the manufacturer of an Internet-enabled tuner that works like a set top box, has launched an attack against a cable industry plan to encrypt basic cable channels, calling it costly to consumers and the environment:

Amidst flat and declining cable TV subscription numbers, Cable companies are lobbying the FCC to force every cable subscriber to rent cable boxes or cable cards even if they don’t want or need them now.

Currently cable companies must deliver broadcast channels in a way that enables tuners like Boxee Live TV (and the ones in your TV) to display those channels without any extra hardware.

Now the cable companies are asking the FCC to change the rules and turn access off. Their main excuse being that it will reduce the need for the cable guy to drive to your house to disconnect your cable and thus be better for the environment. Considering this ruling would also mean millions more set top boxes and cable cards are manufactured, distributed, and attached to electric outlets (see below for consumption), their argument doesn’t hold water. It’s akin to a cable executive taking a private jet to an FCC meeting, but insisting on having recycled toilet paper on-board to help save the environment.

Boxee

Boxee and other consumer groups oppose the industry’s encryption plan because they say it would deliver no tangible benefits to consumers — just higher cable bills for new equipment that rents for $5-15 a month for each box.  It will also render third-party devices like Boxee, Slingbox, and TiVo almost useless for watching cable television.

Boxee claims cable companies like Time Warner Cable could earn hundreds of millions in new revenue leasing an estimated 10-21 million additional set top boxes to their customers nationwide — more than double the existing number.  Boxee also believes the cable industry is effectively trying stop QAM reception — watching digital cable channels over a television equipped with a basic tuner without a set top box.

Consumers faced with a choice between a cable company-owned set top box or an independent third-party tuner like Boxee may find few reasons to consider the latter when it also requires the former to work properly. The additional equipment also represents an increase in energy consumption.  Set top box electricity consumption can rival major home appliances, Boxee says.

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Your DVR Uses More Electricity Than Many Refrigerators; The $48-120 Hidden Cost of Pay TV
2. Money Talks: When Basic Cable Profits Are Down, “Digital Economy Packages” from Comcast Turn Up
3. Charter Customers Revolt: $25 for Broadcast Basic Cable That Costs Cable $1 in Programming Fees
4. Time Warner Cable Lite: Stripped Down Basic Cable Package Tests in NYC, NE Ohio
5. Time Warner Cable Tries to Get Rid of the Set Top Box: IPTV for Samsung/Sony TV’s

AT&T’s vision for 21st century broadband will not extend beyond the 30 million homes that can or will soon be able to access the company’s fiber-to-the-neighborhood service U-verse.

Speaking on an investor’s conference call to discuss 4th quarter earnings results, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson announced the expansion of its fiber to the neighborhood service is now effectively over.

“Our U-verse build is now largely complete, so we have in place an IP video and broadband platform that reaches 30 million customer locations, which gives us significant headroom now to drive penetration,” Stephenson said.

In practical terms, Stephenson’s announcement means AT&T will continue work on building its U-verse platform in cities where the service is already available, but other areas are unlikely to see an introduction to the service anytime soon.  AT&T President John Stark originally envisioned U-verse for 30 million homes and that vision remains unchanged today.

AT&T’s news for its rural customers is worse.  The company admits it has run out of ideas how to provide rural broadband to its landline customers.

“We have been apprehensive on moving, doing anything on rural access lines because the issue here is, do you have a broadband product for rural America?,” Stephenson said. “And we’ve all been trying to find a broadband solution that was economically viable to get out to rural America and we’re not finding one to be quite candid.”

If you can buy it at any price

Stephenson was hoping LTE 4G wireless service could provide a rural broadband solution, a central theme in AT&T’s lobbying campaign for a buyout of T-Mobile, since abandoned.

“That having been set aside, now we’re looking at rural America and asking, what’s the broadband solution? We don’t have one right now,” Stephenson said.

Stephenson earlier told a July meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners that DSL, the most common form of broadband in rural America, was “obsolete.”

The two announcements immediately raised questions in South Carolina and Georgia where AT&T and other telecommunications companies are fiercely lobbying for restrictions on community-owned broadband.

Broadband advocates in both states are wondering why the company is spending money trying to stop other broadband projects while not spending on building better broadband service in those areas themselves.

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Sen. Chip Rogers' vision of rural Georgia's broadband future

Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) thinks he knows broadband.  He, along with several other Georgia legislators well-compensated by some of the state’s largest telecom interests, have defined appropriate Internet speeds at a remarkably low “200 kilobits per second,” less than four times faster than your old AOL dial-up Internet account.  The one you canceled in 1998.

With a background like that, it was no surprise last Thursday when technology leaders and city representatives from across Georgia testified before the Senate Regulated Industries & Utilities Committee, strongly objecting to Rogers’ SB 313, a bill bought and paid for by the very companies the legislation would effectively protect from competition.

Rogers argues he wants to “level the playing field” between private providers that currently dominate broadband service in Georgia, and the long-suffering communities in rural areas that have waited for faster Internet since the Clinton Administration.

City officials from Dalton, Newnan, Elberton, Thomasville, Cartersville, LaGrange, Hogansville and Monroe collectively noted the proposed legislation hardly represents a level playing field when it fully exempts the bill’s backers from any of its provisions.  Thomasville mayor Max Beverly noted the same cable and phone companies that fiercely fought for statewide cable franchises for themselves now want to impose rules that forbid publicly-run companies from operating outside of their respective city limits.

“We would have to turn off service to the county’s two largest employers,” Thomasville Mayor Max Beverly told the Senate panel. “There is no telling what that would do to jobs in our area.”

Those testifying uniformly noted they entered the broadband business because private providers refused to deliver adequate service in their areas.

What community broadband provides communities the big phone and cable companies don't.

“We started our cable system not on a whim but on a demand from our citizens to provide a higher level of service for cable TV and Internet,” said Newnan Mayor Keith Brady. “We got into the cable business originally to provide fiber optics and broadband because Charter Communications would simply not invest in our community.”

Now cable and phone companies across Georgia are supporting legislation that would make that community service next to impossible to provide.

“The most ironic part of legislation like SB 313 is that cable and phone companies only take an interest in rural broadband when they ghostwrite bills like this to stop other people from providing the service themselves,” said Stop the Cap! reader Max Curr. “When I lived in Hiltonia, some of these same companies laughed at me when I asked about broadband. It simply was not profitable, they were not going to provide it, and with this bill, they will make sure it stays that way.”

But the cost to consumers extends way beyond the most rural corners of the state. SB 313 also hurts existing cable and phone customers who pay higher rates because of the lack of competition.  That assures the kind of anemic broadband Rogers and his friends in the cable and phone industries are only too happy to define as 200kbps.  At least that is 10kbps more than a similar bill being pushed by telephone and cable operators in South Carolina.

Brady says their community-owned system not only provides broadband where Charter would not, the cable company also was forced to reduce their rates for consumers in nearby communities, saving taxpayers across the entire city and county millions.

In Elberton, the lack of broadband was so pervasive the 4,700 local residents demanded the city provide the service themselves. Commercial providers had stonewalled the county seat of Elbert County for years until the city broke ground on a broadband project in 2001.

Dalton Utilities' CEO Don Cope (left), Newnan mayor Keith Brady (right) (Photo: Georgia Municipal Assn.)

Elberton City Manager Lanier Dunn complained SB 313 undercuts the rational definition of minimum Internet speeds to levels most Americans would not even consider “broadband.”  Dunn noted that the 2010 National Broadband Plan calls for download speeds 250 times greater, and by 2020 500 times greater, than what Rogers’ bill currently defines as broadband service.

“We should be reaching for higher and faster speeds, not relegating ourselves to barely just above dial-up,” Dunn said.

Don Cope, president and CEO of Dalton Utilities, demonstrated that municipal broadband systems are not the financial risk large telecommunications companies always claim they represent.  In fact, Dalton’s system has never received a penny of tax revenue and its accounting is open to public scrutiny to prove it.

Cope noted SB 313 imposes restrictions on community providers, but completely exempts those owned by the companies pushing the bill.

“I would ask that you look at the private providers in the state,” Cope said. “Look at their reports, and you would see how many dollars that are provided to them from the federal government. We are talking about in the billions of dollars. All the [private telecommunications entities] that I know about have some form of government support.”

Dalton isn’t the only city in Georgia with a successful community-owned operation.

The city of Newnan found their system such a valuable asset, they sold it at a profit to a private company in 2008 and used the proceeds to pay off its remaining construction costs.

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Perhaps the most the world ever hears about the tiny British island of St. Helena, a home in the South Atlantic for 4,000 residents, is the annual St. Helena Radio Day when the nation takes to the shortwave radio dial to say hello to friends on every continent.

Beyond that, St. Helena is mostly known as an out-of-the-way tourist destination and potential point of contact for ships traversing the South Atlantic between South America and southern Africa.  St. Helena’s residents live with three television stations, two radio stations, two newspapers, and a single satellite connection to the Internet providing one 10/3Mbps circuit shared by all 4,000 residents.

Signing up for “broadband” is an expensive ordeal.  Individual residents can purchase strictly usage-limited DSL Internet service at prices ranging from $31 a month for 128/64kbps service (limited to 300MB per month) to $190 for 384/128kbps service, with a 3.3GB monthly allowance.  Overlimit fees start at around $0.15 per megabyte.

St. Helena

Local residents find life without the modern day definition of broadband service a major hindrance, especially for education.  Students have left St. Helena for the United Kingdom to pursue studies.  Economically, self-sustained employment is next to impossible on the island.

“I’m an IT engineer and I would love to return to my island to start an IT business, but because of the slow, expensive and unreliable Internet connection this is simply impossible,” said Jonathan Clingham, an IT infrastructure engineer now working in Wiltshire, England.

Now a grass-roots campaign has been launched to help convince several telecommunications companies financing a new underseas fiber cable project laid between Brazil, Angola, and South Africa to reroute the cable slightly through the island of St. Helena, opening the door to modern broadband for the island.

The group is calling on supporters to help draw attention to the project, arrange for the British government to help underwrite the expense of an extra 50 kilometers of cable needed to reach St. Helena, and providing assistance to lease a circuit on the new cable:

• If you are an British citizen or UK resident please sign our e-petition to connect St Helena.
• Show your support by liking our Facebook page.
• Spread the word and let everybody know about our campaign.
• Ask the following entities/persons for support:
  • the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office
  • the UK Department for International Development
  • as a UK citizen your MPs and Lords

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2. Missouri Governor Supports Proposal to Bring 95 Percent of State Residents High Speed Access
3. How Comcast’s Usage Cap Costs Them Business and Your Internet Connection
4. Shamrock, Okla.: Bankrupt City, Abandoned Police Cars, Padlocked Doors, But Internet Service Prevails
5. Cox Unveils ‘Ultimate Internet’ 50/5 Service in Rhode Island

While simultaneously complaining about the spiraling costs of sports programming such as MSG Networks, the nation’s two largest cable operators are planning to cut checks worth $80 million to help bail the NY Mets baseball team out of some of its long term debt.

The New York Times reports both Comcast and Time Warner Cable are preparing to funnel funds into the team through regional sports network SNY.

Time Warner Cable and Comcast are nearing a plan to finance SNY’s purchase of four shares in the Mets, worth $80 million, said one person e with knowledge of the plan who was not authorized to speak publicly.

[...] That means they will have much-needed cash to pay off their substantial debts. But it would be a slightly quirky way of doing it. The deal would mean 16 percent of the Mets would be owned by SNY. The Mets’ parent company, Sterling Equities, owns 70 percent of the network.

[...] Lee Berke, the president of a media consulting company, said that Time Warner Cable and Comcast “don’t want to see the team stumble as it has been, because it directly impacts what they’re putting on TV. This is shaping up as a multiyear downswing for the Mets, and this is a way to keep them above water.”

[...] As for Time Warner Cable and Comcast, it was not immediately clear why they would not invest directly in the Mets. But the two companies clearly want to put money into Wilpon’s financially beleaguered hands (the club has lost some $120 million in the last two years), even if it has to be routed through SNY, to ensure that the team meets its $200 million goal.

[...] Together, Time Warner Cable and Comcast own about 30 percent of SNY. The network started carrying Mets games in 2006.

That investment comes at the same time cable operators are increasingly vocal about sports programming costs.

“ESPN, through … sheer muscle, has been able to say to us, ‘You will carry this service on the lowest level subscription you offer, and you will make all of them pay for it,’” Matt Polka, CEO of the American Cable Association, a trade group told Newsweek. “My next-door neighbor is 74, a widow. She says to me, ‘Why do I have to get all that sports programming?’ She has no idea that in the course of a year, for just ESPN and ESPN2, she is sending a check to Disney for about $70. She would be apoplectic if she knew … Ultimately, there’s going to be a revolt over the cost. Or policymakers will get involved, because the costs of these things are so out of line with cost of living that someone’s going to put up a stop sign.”

Cable analysts continue to be astonished by an inflation rate in sports programming rates that rivals health care costs.

“Every time [there is] a huge increase we can’t believe it, and then there’s another huge increase,” says Laura Martin, an analyst with investment bank Needham & Co. “The rapidly rising cost of sports, especially the new NFL contracts, increases the likelihood that sports will be forced by the government to be on a different tier within three years, by our estimates.”

Cable industry investment in sporting teams is now becoming a familiar headline.  In early January, the Los Angeles Times reported Time Warner Cable was considering buying the Los Angeles Dodgers at a price that could exceed $2 billion.  It would compliment two new regional sports cable channels Time Warner plans to launch in southern California featuring the Los Angeles Lakers.

Other coverage you may enjoy:

1. Time Warner Cable Interested In Spending Billions to Buy Los Angeles Dodgers
2. Big Cable Running Scared: Comcast/Time Warner Cable Promotions Can Save Customers A Fortune
3. NY City Wants Time Warner Cable to Refund Cable Customers for MSG-Less Cable Lineup
4. MSG/Time Warner Cable Flap Heats Up: Bars Cancel Cable in Buffalo, Customers Want Refunds
5. It Begins: Wall Street Analyst Calls for Comcast & Time Warner Cable to Merge

AT&T 3G MicroCell

AT&T has lost another customer.

PC World‘s Tony Bradley noticed reception on AT&T’s network in suburban Houston has been losing bars in more places than it has maintained over the last few years.

“[...] for reasons unknown to me the AT&T network in my area has been getting steadily worse. There have been a couple of weak spots in the same location for years. Rather than improving and eliminating those weak spots, the weak spots became dead zones…and then proliferated.

I don’t live in the boonies. I live in suburban Houston in a community that is very near a major highway, and yet there are four or five areas with literally no service. I could almost understand if the signal decreased, or if it switched from 3G to the older Edge network in places, but in 2012 in an affluent suburb near a highway there is no excuse for a company like AT&T to have any area where my phone literally displays “No Service”.

Even with the growing dead zone epidemic, I was still reluctant to switch. I maintained that the grass is always greener, and that I was better off to stick with the devil I know. That is, until I moved.

I only moved four miles, and I am still in the same community I was in before. However, in my new house the AT&T signal is too flaky and unreliable. I have to walk to special places in my house to get a workable signal, and even then I am told constantly that I am “breaking up” by the person on the other end of the line. I often miss calls because there is no signal and my phone doesn’t even ring. I don’t realize I even had a call until I receive the voicemail.”

AT&T’s response to these kinds of reception problems is to suggest customers purchase one of their 3G MicroCell units, which delivers a wireless signal inside your home or business connected through your broadband account.  But Bradley took exception that AT&T would charge him $200 (negotiated down to $100) and a monthly service fee just to mitigate the company’s own reception problems.  AT&T has since lost Bradley as a long-lasting customer — he took his business to Verizon Wireless, which offers better reception in his neighborhood.

The columnist cannot understand why AT&T would treat a long-term customer so poorly.

“AT&T could have kept me happy, but chose to let me leave instead,” Bradley writes.  “So, let me get this straight. AT&T isn’t capable of delivering the service I am already paying for, and the proposed solution is that I spend $200 (or $100 after a lengthy and heated debate), plus additional money every month for the privilege of routing my calls over the broadband Internet service I am also paying for? That was really the last straw for me with AT&T.”

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10-digit dialing is a nuisance in Canada too, where British Columbia and Alberta customers were told to dial the area code for every call.

Verizon FiOS’ “digital phone” product is a far cry from Verizon’s traditional landline service.  Some central New York customers now getting hooked up to the fiber-to-the-home service report they are frustrated because they have to dial an area code for every phone call, even those to friends and neighbors right next door.

Verizon told WSYR-TV that unlike traditional landline service based in your neighborhood, Verizon FiOS phone service is, in fact, a nationwide Voice Over IP (VOIP) service, and uses servers across the country to process phone calls.  Although many traditional VOIP services have since learned ways around the area code limitation, Verizon has not made a similar effort to allow customers to pre-designate an area code.  That would permit Verizon’s servers to assume any seven digit number dialed was within a particular area code and complete the call accordingly.

Instead, Verizon advises customers to learn how to use the included “speed dial” feature to make dialing more convenient.

Verizon’s competitors, including companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable are quick to point out seven digit dialing is available from them, except where multiple overlaid area codes in the same geographic area exist.  So far, parts of western and central New York have endured area code splits, but for now each service area maintains just a single area code.

Click here to view the embedded video.

WSYR in Syracuse answers viewers’ suggested stories.  Today, it’s about why Verizon FiOS customers are forced to dial 10 numbers for every phone call.  (1 minute)

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