Tired of paying that high Verizon Wireless bill?  Verizon’s handsome profits can translate into some great benefits, if you’re an employee.

For western New Yorkers, here’s your chance.

Verizon Wireless is hiring 200 call center employees in Rochester this year to bolster its existing 1,200 employee customer service department.

“As our customer base grows and the devices and services they use become more sophisticated, providing an outstanding customer experience becomes even more important,” said Russ Preite, president of Verizon Wireless’ Upstate New York Region. “We’ve been fortunate to continue to find top-quality, highly skilled talent in the Rochester area. Today’s announcement further endorses our commitment to Rochester and to maintaining superior customer service for our customers.”

Verizon can afford to pay employees some nice benefits:

• competitive salaries
• health, dental and vision coverage that begin on the first day of employment
• a 401(k) program with a 6 percent company match of the employee’s contribution
• annual bonus program
• profit sharing
• merit increases
• tuition assistance
• adoption assistance
• an on-site health and wellness facility, and more.

You can apply online.  If you land a job there, why not take a portion of your paycheck and send Stop the Cap! a contribution.  We’ll put their money to good use.

A Huntsville AT&T sub-contractor trying to install new telephone cable is safe after a resident started shooting in his direction, forcing Marcus Kyle to make a mad dash down a nearby highway to safety.

Questioned by police, the homeowner claimed he thought he was firing his shotgun at a possum.  WHNT-TV spoke with police officials and witnesses who are not convinced by the man’s story, suggesting the homeowner may have felt the AT&T worker was trespassing on his property.  Several witnesses claim the man took direct aim at the AT&T lineman before beginning to fire.

As shots rang out, the worker hightailed it out of range, thankfully unharmed. Those who want to learn more about gun laws in New York may consider consulting a firearms attorney.

The Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office offered to charge the homeowner with misdemeanor reckless endangerment, but Kyle refused to press charges.

Kyle and his fellow workers added they were working within a recognized utility easement and did not stray onto anyone’s property, and weren’t sure why the resident started shooting.

Utility company employees usually have the right of reasonable access to their respective easements to perform work on the company’s infrastructure.  Many workers may inform residents of their presence as a courtesy, but it is not required.  It is never responsible to confront such workers with weapons.  If a homeowner has concerns about the legitimacy of the work being done, they should contact local police and let them handle it.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHNT Huntsville Man Shot at While Installing Phone Lines 6-16-10.flv[/flv]

WHNT-TV in Huntsville ran this story about a local homeowner who let his shotgun do the talking, firing at a telephone company subcontractor he claims he mistook for a possum.  (2 minutes)

Belinda Horton, Clarksville, Tenn. speaks with AT&T customer service

Back in April, Stop the Cap! covered the story of Clarksville, Tenn., resident Belinda Horton, who found herself besieged by endless billing errors from AT&T.

She was not alone.  More than 15,000 customers in Tennessee alone have been suffering with an AT&T “unlimited” long distance calling plan that has billed every long distance call at non-plan rates.  At one point, Horton found herself staring at a bill for $1,350.

As of late April, more than three thousand dollars in erroneous charges had appeared on her phone bill over several months, when she was only supposed to have paid a flat rate amount of $25 a month for unlimited long distance.

Horton did secure credits from AT&T, but only after repeatedly calling their customer service department after every inaccurate bill arrived.

For her and other Tennessee customers in the same boat, appeals to the Tennessee Regulatory Authority were supposed to fix the problem.  AT&T’s legal counsel, Guy Hicks, apologized on behalf of the company and promised to make things right.

That lip service was apparently good enough for the TRA, which as we wrote at the time was just a bit premature:

It was disappointing to see the TRA praising AT&T at the end of Monday’s meeting.  This is an ongoing nightmare for some customers, and TRA officials seemed all too ready to applaud the company for its promises to fix the problem while Tennessee residents continue to be overbilled.  The time for praise comes after the company resolves the issue and every customer has been credited for every error.  AT&T has promised it would resolve these billing problems for nearly a month, with complaints still arriving even as the Authority met.

Long time readers can guess what happened next.

Belinda dropped a note to Stop the Cap! informing us she had enough with AT&T and decided to switch to Charter Communications.  But in one last indignity, her final bill from AT&T was loaded with inaccurate charges running over $100.

Now that Horton is a former AT&T customer, the company has been even less responsive than ever.  The TRA is reportedly involving itself in the matter once again, although it’s clear AT&T doesn’t exactly feel threatened by the Authority.

Had AT&T done the right thing, they would have not only credited back the inaccurately billed long distance calls, they also would credit back the $25 a month Belinda paid for a long distance plan she had to fight every step of the way to actually receive.  It’s the least the company could do for a customer who was forced to flee AT&T because they couldn’t resolve their own billing problems.

Belinda writes she has better things to do than spend endless hours fighting with the phone company.  She has been devoting as much free time as possible caring for an ailing friend.  Many people would have simply paid AT&T’s final bill just to be rid of them, but it was Belinda’s friend who encouraged her to stay in the fight and not pay AT&T one penny more than they deserve.

Stop the Cap! is attempting to get Horton in touch with the executive office customer service department at AT&T to get this resolved once and for all.

AT&T 3G MicroCell

If you are an AT&T customer with a 3G MicroCell, AT&T’s home-based “cell tower”, take note: your 3G data usage, even while at home, counts against your monthly usage cap.

AT&T’s MicroCell ($150) does not use AT&T’s mobile network — it instead relies on your home broadband connection — but AT&T charges customers as if they were.

For customers who assume MicroCell traffic should be exempt because they provide and pay for the connectivity, AT&T’s overlimit fees await.

The company’s pricing and policies make owning a MicroCell increasingly pointless, particularly for data applications.  That’s because AT&T does not meter Wi-Fi usage, even when using AT&T’s own Wi-Fi network.

The disparity between femtocell traffic (the industry name for devices like the MicroCell) and Wi-Fi doesn’t make much sense to Dean Bubley, writing for his Disruptive Wireless-Disruptive Analysis blog:

Given that the RAN generally costs much more than the core network for most operators, there should clearly be differential (or zero-rated) pricing for traffic using femtocell offload. Either that, or there should be a mechanism for customers to charge AT&T for using THE USER’S broadband pipes for backhaul.

It is critical that any policy management and charging infrastruture is capable of discerning bearer type (which could also be UMA WiFi tunneled via the core on some other networks). Otherwise it makes a total mockery of the concept that policy is intended to align pricing with the underlying costs of service delivery.

It also makes a mockery of the femtocell concept as a mass proposition, if the end-user has to pay more than using their own WiFi. If I was a femto vendor today, I’d be spitting feathers about this, as it completely undermines the positioning vs. WiFi as an offload tool.

AT&T doesn’t care.

“The 3G MicroCell complements Wi-Fi by providing enhanced in-home voice coverage and reliable data when Wi-Fi may not be available — but it is primarily intended for voice calls,” an AT&T spokeswoman wrote in an email to Light Reading Mobile.

As the website notes, for consumers, the femto price model means that they will pay AT&T for the Microcell to get better indoor 3G coverage, pay for the backhaul connection to AT&T’s core network, and pay AT&T to use that indoor 3G base station.  What a great deal — for AT&T.

Before: Auernheimer waves a gun while delivering a “sermon” on his iProphet Blip.tv channel

AT&T’s iPad security breach saga turned into an episode of COPS and the X-Files yesterday with the arrest of a key member of the group that exposed the security flaw.

Andrew Auernheimer, 24, a key member of Goatse Security, was arrested Tuesday after Fayetteville (Ark.) police uncovered drugs while executing a search warrant in his home.  Auernheimer was charged with four felony counts of drug possession and one misdemeanor charge for prescription medication inappropriately in his possession.  Police found cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD, along with controlled substance-designated prescription medication. The authorities generally take the drug addicts and dealers to rehab centers like mission viejo rehab, to make sure they’re not under the influence of drugs at the time of investigation.

Auernheimer is a key figure in Goatse Security’s revelation of a security flaw in AT&T’s systems that allowed more than one hundred thousand e-mail addresses of iPad owners to be disclosed.

He remains in the Washington County Detention Center pending a bail hearing this afternoon.

His arrest came days after AT&T officials said they would pursue prosecution of the hacking group to the fullest extent of the law.  The FBI is reportedly involved in an investigation over the security breach.

Auernheimer is a controversial figure.  The self-styled “prophet” records anti-Semitic video sermons for his iProphet channel on Blip.tv.  A quick and mind-numbing review of the contents included “revelations,” perhaps drug-fueled, that the Jews represent vermin, Christians should be armed, everyone needs to use mescaline, and a consideration of the essential need to obtain temporary tattoos of dogs named Rocket.  On one of his more recent videos, Auernheimer announced he was “fleeing” the Los Angeles area due to “attacks by the Jews.”

After: Auernheimer is now a guest at the Washington County (Ark.) Detention Center, charged with drug offenses

Ironically, one year ago this month, Auernheimer was detained by Portland FBI officials and questioned about threatening phone messages left on the voicemail of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Oregon on the night of June 16, 2009.

Before uncovering AT&T’s security lapses, Auernheimer’s online aliases —  “Escher” and “Weev,” made appearances in the media, especially in an August 2008 piece in the NY Times, “The Trolls Among Us.”

Meanwhile, speculation about how AT&T allowed an obvious security flaw to remain open is now narrowing in on recent company layoffs.

Gawker reports AT&T slashed up to 200 employees in its Security Office in March, nearly 20 percent of its staff.  The group kept its layoffs quiet, Gawker’s tipster said, to avoid damaging the image of deep security expertise its sells to businesses.

That a company as profitable as AT&T was willing to slash employees willy-nilly was a point of confusion for Gawker:

The layoffs seem puzzling given that AT&T had just posted profits up 25 percent to $3.1 billion. The profits rose on strong performance in the wireless division, whose association with the iPhone helped it surpass Verizon Wireless in new customer additions. The wireless division continued to add customers and revenue the next quarter, even as a health care charge ate into its profits.

Simple greed could be one explanation. Our source was told upper management intentionally cut CSO payroll and accepted “greater risk in operations” to fatten up company profits and even their own bonuses.

But even more problems cropped up at AT&T when an untested ordering system crashed when customers tried to reserve the latest iPhone.  CNET covered that story:

As the iPhone 4 preorder disaster worsens by the minute, the blame looks to fall squarely on AT&T’s shoulders as we learn more about what went wrong. The most damaging of these may be an source close to the carrier which now claims the system which AT&T was not tested before the launch.

The source works at a third party facility that processes the orders for AT&T. Apparently, the reports of users being able to login to others accounts even though they were attempting to log into their own could be related to a botched update on AT&T’s side related to fraud.