Getting Internet service in rural America can involve a whole lot more than calling the local phone company to check if DSL service is available.  When it is not, satellite broadband is often the only realistic choice to access the Internet.  Unfortunately, navigating through the options, terms and conditions, and restrictions requires the help of a lawyer or rocket scientist.

Kevin Hanssen, a dairy farmer in rural Wisconsin is just one of a dozen Stop the Cap! readers who access us over a satellite Internet connection.  He, along with others, have been writing requesting assistance navigating an increasingly confusing amount of detail about recent upgrades taking place at the parent company of his provider — WildBlue, a service of ViaSat.

As Stop the Cap! recently reported, ViaSat is placing a new satellite into service that will bring improved service for certain customers.  Long time customers like Hanssen have waited more than two years for company-promised upgrades that would bring better speeds and more generous usage policies. Currently, Hanssen faces a tiny usage allowance and “broadband” speeds of well under 1Mbps, especially in the evening.

“As a long term customer, I have lived under a plan that gives me 7.5GB in downloads and 2.3GB in uploads, but my experience with WildBlue may be very different than other customers, because the company has so many legacy and special plans that apply to different customers, so it is very hard to say ‘this is WildBlue’s policy’ because it can vary so much,” Hanssen tells us.

Indeed, over WildBlue’s history, ViaSat has changed its access policies several times, sometimes raising, but often lowering usage allowances accompanied by rate adjustments.  Since 2005, WildBlue customers who originally faced a simple 30-day consumption limit that reset after each billing cycle now face a combination of a usage allowance under the company’s “Fair Access/Data Allowance Policy (FAP),” and an even more confusing rolling speed throttle called the “Quota Management Threshold (QMT).”  Exceeding a monthly usage allowance guarantees broadband speeds of dial-up or less.  Speeds are also curtailed temporarily for customers who run browsing sessions that consume as little as 30MB over a 30 minute period.

WildBlue's Quota Management Threshold starts reducing your speeds after a heavy browsing session.

With the help of Cisco, which created the throttled bandwidth technology, WildBlue’s combined FAP and QMT systems make it impossible for a customer punished just once by speed throttles to completely clear their record as a ‘known bandwidth abuser’ unless they avoid using any bandwidth for a month.  For most customers unequipped to fully grasp the highly technical explanations of both policies, customer service representatives boil it down to something easier to understand: the less service you use, the better the chance you will not face a speed throttle rendering your connection practically unusable.

WildBlue's confusing throttle.

With strict limits in place, WildBlue not surprisingly scores among the lowest of all Internet Service Providers for customer satisfaction, and its nearest competitor Hughes does no better.

“As you have written before, satellite really is ‘take it or leave it broadband’ — heavily rationed, confusing, and very expensive,” Hanssen says.

For Hanssen and other Stop the Cap! readers who rely on satellite Internet, the promise of new capacity and faster speeds were supposed to turn “satellite as a last resort” into something more comparable to 4G wireless in America’s most rural areas.  But as our readers share, there is a big chasm between marketing hype and reality for customers on the ground.

Confusing Brands & Pricing

ViaSat has not been content to offer customers a single brand of satellite broadband service.  In addition to WildBlue itself, ViaSat markets plans under the American Recovery Act (the broadband stimulus program), co-branded service from DirecTV, DISH, AT&T and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), and forthcoming service on its newest satellite, ViaSat 1, which the company is marketing as “Exede” Internet. Customers west of the Mississippi who qualify for the American Recovery Act program get free installation and more generous usage allowances of up to 60GB per month.

“For two years, WildBlue has told us better usage allowances and faster service was coming with the new upgraded satellite, which we assumed would service all existing WildBlue customers,” Hanssen shares. “Now it turns out they are leaving existing WildBlue customers behind on the old satellite and creating a brand new service to sell new customers on the new satellite.”

Indeed, for marketing purposes, WildBlue and Exede are two different entities, and WildBlue customers looking for faster speeds from Exede will need to pony up at least $150 for new equipment, sign a new contract, and switch to a new Fair Access Policy that actually delivers many customers a lower usage allowance than their existing service from WildBlue offers.

“It’s total bait and switch, promising us faster service and then reducing the usage allowance that goes with it and adding around an $8/GB over-usage fee on Exede,” Hanssen says.

For customers served by the new ViaSat 1 satellite, Exede sells service based on usage, not speed.  The advertised speed (not independently verified) is 12/3Mbps, which will cost $49.99 for up to 7.5GB per month, $79.99 for 15GB per month, or $129.99 for 25GB per month.

“Highway robbery I call it, because some of those caps are lower than on WildBlue so you are paying for better speed you won’t be able to use unless you agree to pay a lot more for a bigger allowance,” Hanssen says.

New Customers Get Priority Over Old Ones?

Customers eager to switch to the new, faster satellite broadband service report they are encountering roadblocks from ViaSat and their large independent dealer network responsible for sales and service of the satellite reception equipment.  An often-heard accusation is that current customers are taking a back seat to new customers already invited to sign up.

That is a charge ViaSat, through its support forum, has strongly denied.

“We’re not giving preferential treatment to new vs. existing customers,” says WildBlue Forum Administrator Steve. “The dates we’ve quoted to existing customers who call in are approximately April/May, but yes, it could be sooner. It all depends on the number and availability of certified installer technicians in a given area. If someone absolutely wanted it now, we’ll try our best to accommodate that along with the big flood of new orders we’re receiving.”

Steve explains the delays to upgrade existing customers are occurring because new customer installations are currently “through the roof.”

An independent dealer offers new customers a better deal.

But Stop the Cap! has also learned from an independent WildBlue dealer that ViaSat is offering a bonus for dealers who sign new customers, an incentive not paid to upgrade existing ones.  Some new customer promotions also offer free installation and deep discounts until the end of 2012 for 15GB ($49.99) and 25GB ($79.99) service on the new ViaSat 1.  Existing customers do not get the discount pricing and have to pay a $150 installation fee for new equipment required for the new satellite.  Customers within a 2-year initial contract term pay even more: $250.

Customers Revolt

The government-sponsored Broadband Initiative program required WildBlue to provide a more generous usage allowance in return for broadband stimulus money.

Customers learning about the new pricing are unhappy.

Bill Cameron feels let down as a loyal customer by ViaSat’s pricing:

This new Excede 12 plan is an absolute joke. 12Mbps is awesome but the top plan limits you to a up/down total of 25GB and its $129.99 +$9.99 lease fee. So what good is 12Mbps if you really cant use it? Forget Netflix, Hulu or any Video on Demand. I have DirecTV and was hoping to be able to do some streaming but there is no way. If I want to stay at the same $80/mo price point I will loose 7GB of monthly cap since the mid tier plan is 15GB combined up and down. I don’t know what WildBlue is thinking here. Come on, $140/mo in the middle of a recession? Plus there is a $149 setup fee and even customers who have been with them for 7 years, like me, has to pay it. My loyalty is not rewarded one bit. A brand new customer pays the same amount.

A Broadband Reports reader sums up his views about WildBlue’s broken promises:

[…] We have been living with low caps on Wildblue for years, then for several years they -promise- an upgrade that will change everything. Then they up the speed to something most people don’t need, and REDUCE the amount of data available by a LARGE amount, increasing the price as well significantly. It was not what we were lead to believe. This was supposed to be an upgrade, but the speed is useless without quantity, that point has been made over and over.

And it doesn’t take someone sitting all day to go over the caps. It can take a little over an hour every day for one person to go over on the current 512Kbps plan, imagine with more speed how easy the person can go over with about 23% less data available.

Bottom line, it was not an upgrade, period, for many of us. Every neighbor I know is thinking the same thing, some currently drive 30 miles one way to get to a free hotspot to have enough bandwidth for online classes. The offered new plans are not enough for what they do either. Is anyone that understands the limits of satellite asking for anything unreasonable, NO. We were expecting an increase of some sort, any kind, not further insane restrictions after years of being restricted. A downgrade and overcharging is not an upgrade no matter how they try to spin it to us. If so few use what’s available as they say anyway, what would have been the harm of doubling the current caps. PERFECTLY REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS.

Kevin Hanssen wishes he had better options:

At this point, just about anything would be better than WildBlue.  Since AT&T shows no interest in bringing me DSL service, it’s probably going to be wireless broadband or nothing.  We have spotty cell coverage in this part of Wisconsin, but should a provider do something about that, we would still be facing tiny usage allowances in the 2-10GB range.

This is why universal service policies should extend to broadband service, to make certain rural America has reasonable access at reasonable prices.

There is nothing reasonable about satellite or wireless Internet at these speeds, allowances, and prices.  WildBlue wants new customers at all costs, even if they walk over their loyal customers to sign them up. But why shouldn’t they? Their only effective competition is Hughes, and they are actually worse!

While AT&T endures zoning-related delays to build out its fiber-to-the-neighborhood service U-verse, a scrappy anti-cap, pro-speed Internet provider in Santa Rosa has announced its intention to deliver gigabit speeds to San Franciscans over a fiber-to-the-home network that will begin construction early next year.

Sonic.net has been providing broadband services for years in northern California, using AT&T’s network of phone lines to deliver unlimited 20Mbps DSL service (including a phone line) for $40 a month.

Sunset District, San Francisco, Calif. (Courtesy: Stilfehler)

Now the company is branching beyond traditional DSL into fiber optics.  Sonic.net has already completed the first phase of its gigabit fiber network in Sebastopol, where it advertises 100Mbps service for $40 a month and 1000Mbps for $70 a month, both including phone service at no extra charge (two lines for the 1Gbps plan).

In San Francisco, Sonic plans to start with 2000 homes in the Sunset District, expanding its network to fully cover the city within five years.

Such a network could deliver serious competition to Comcast and AT&T, the currently-dominant providers.  AT&T’s U-verse buildout has been stalled over the need to install 768 large, unsightly metal cabinets on San Francisco street corners.  The company, as late as this summer, remains mired in zoning disputes and public protests.  Sonic’s fiber network will require similar equipment, and the San Francisco Chronicle reports Sonic filed its own application with the city Department of Public Works to install 188 cabinets, measuring 5 feet tall, starting next year.

Sonic may have a better chance if only because it does not have AT&T’s less-than-stellar reputation among some residents and customers who have been upset with the company’s wireless performance, and ongoing battles over cell tower placement.  Sonic.net CEO Dane Jasper tells the Chronicle:

“There is a huge demand in San Francisco for higher bandwidth services, and fiber is the only long-term way to meet this demand,” he said.

Given the fact that the company’s all-fiber network will bring “the fastest and cheapest” broadband service to the city, Jasper says he thinks the chances of overcoming the obstacles experienced by his larger rival are “pretty good.”

Sonic.net has gained a reputation for excellent customer service and vociferously opposes usage caps and other Internet Overcharging schemes.  The company has attracted the support of Google, which is using Sonic to manage its gigabit fiber network on the campus grounds of Stanford University in Palo Alto.

AT&T has previously dismissed fiber to the home service as too costly to provide, and has adopted in its place a fiber-to-the-neighborhood system that relies on traditional home phone wiring for the last part of its network.

Haven't we been here before?

History is best ignored when a Wall Street Journal columnist frames an argument in favor of strengthening the hegemony of Ma Bell, and darn ‘ole past precedent gets in the way of the writer’s “facts.”

Gordon Crovitz is a media and information industry adviser and executive, including former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, executive vice president of Dow Jones and president of its Consumer Media Group.  But today he’s unofficially, unabashedly AT&T.

In a column published this week, Crovitz hosts a whine and cheese festival on behalf of poor and abused AT&T, whose multi-billion dollar takeover of T-Mobile is in tatters. Crovitz places the blame squarely on the government for ruining everything:

How soon we forget the risks of overregulation: Last week, the Federal Communications Commission flexed the same muscle it once used to quash market forces in the phone industry to quash market forces in the wireless industry.

Today’s AT&T, a spinoff from the original, needs more spectrum to catch up with market leader Verizon, also a Ma Bell descendant, to support iPhones, Androids and other devices that feature video and sophisticated apps. It wants to buy T-Mobile, a division of a German company, which doesn’t have the resources to compete in the United States on its own. But the FCC decided to apply antitrust theory from the industrial era and claims to know better than wireless companies how they should operate their businesses.

AT&T’s proposed acquisition is best understood as a private-sector solution to a government-created problem. The FCC has not been able to get Congress to approve auctions to reallocate spectrum to wireless from less valuable uses. AT&T wants T-Mobile’s bandwidth so it can extend the latest fourth-generation network to 97% of the country from 80% and improve its spotty service in congested areas.

Under laws dating to the 1920s, the FCC gets to decide if a merger is in the “public interest,” a vague standard for top-down decision making. Government is the last institution in this era of fast technological innovation to act as if it has the information and power to dictate how change happens.

Crovitz apparently prefers AT&T and its phone pal Verizon Wireless dictate how “change happens,” because the two companies control the vast majority of wireless telecommunications in the United States.  Both also charge near-identical prices for near-identical levels of service.  AT&T & VZW are completely comfortable with that status quo, especially if disruptive competitor T-Mobile is dealt with in the usual industry manner (merger/buyout).

There is nothing vague about the FCC report that condemns the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile for the anti-competitive monstrosity it represents.  In hundreds of pages Crovitz evidently never read, a careful and credible argument against the deal was laid out for all to examine.  That evidence is far more persuasive than AT&T’s heavily-redacted filings the public was not authorized to see (for ‘competitive reasons’), and a multi-million-dollar-a-holler public relations distortion strategy based on hollow promises.

Playing Catch-Up With Verizon Wireless?  Hardly.

AT&T hardly needs to “catch up” with Verizon Wireless.  Both companies own wireless spectrum they have warehoused for “future use.”  As a backdrop to the merger, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has already indicated the agency is hard at work carefully re-allocating spectrum to make more room for wireless services.  The “bandwidth crisis” AT&T talks about is a convenient argument for a merger, until you realize T-Mobile’s mostly-urban wireless network won’t help AT&T achieve its goal of rural wireless expansion.  T-Mobile has never provided service in rural America and never will.

Crovitz attempts to leverage Verizon Wireless’ recent deal with America’s largest cable companies as an argument for the AT&T and T-Mobile merger, suggesting that deal was a game changer.  What goes unsaid is the fact AT&T could have pursued that deal for themselves.  Did they?  No.  Despite AT&T’s public relations spin, the proposed merger with T-Mobile is much more than a spectrum acquisition. As the FCC and the Justice Department have argued, this merger is about ridding AT&T of a competitor willing to offer more services at lower prices.  That forces AT&T to respond in kind to compete, and consumers have benefited greatly from that competition. Verizon Wireless is hardly competition at all considering both companies price services nearly identically.  Beyond that is Sprint, already saddled with the financial albatross Clearwire and questions about its long term viability in a duopolistic wireless market.

Crovitz is wrong on his other “facts” as well:

Deutsche Telekom is hardly short on cash.  The company has plenty of resources and could bolster T-Mobile USA to compete if it saw fit.  It doesn’t, preferring to focus on its more lucrative European markets.  Instead of selling the operation on the open market to other players, which could include foreign providers interested in competing in the high-priced American market, it elected to be courted by AT&T.

Overconfident AT&T

Henry De Lamar Clayton, Jr.: Author of the Clayton Act

The merger illustrates AT&T’s unparalleled level of overconfidence it could deal with regulators and consumer groups who would certainly object to the deal.  The company has since spent millions it could have used to improve its network on campaign-contribution-fueled support building on Capitol Hill, a shameless dollar-a-holler astroturf campaign that pays off non-profit groups to sing the deal’s praises, and an expensive ad campaign to sucker Americans into thinking reduced competition will somehow deliver lower prices and better service.

Even former Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin would have likely paused over such an obvious monopoly-building operation.  The Obama Administration’s FCC chairman — Julius Genachowski —  while often too timid for our tastes, at least knows when it is time to join the chorus of opposition.

The FCC doesn’t pretend to tell AT&T how to run its business.  It does, however, serve the public interest by providing checks and balances to unfettered corporate power.  While the Wall Street Journal‘s world view of capitalism would have been favored by the most egregious robber barons, history has taught us that when big corporations get a stranglehold on vital industries, the entire economy can suffer.

Crovitz would have us ignore the massive corporate abuses of 100 years ago that eventually provoked Congress into trust-busting legislative reform, breaking up the monopolies and oligopolies that presided over the railways, early telecommunications networks, and industrial raw materials like oil and steel.  Restrained competition brought monopoly prices and blockades against would-be competitors.  What was true then is still true now, only the technology has changed.

In 1911, the economy was powered in part by railroads, which transported goods and raw materials.  Telecommunications networks like the telegraph and early telephone helped conduct business and coordinated the movement of goods.  In 2011’s growing digital economy, telecommunications increasingly represents the railroads, telegraph, and telephone all combined-into-one.  Some of America’s richest tech companies depend on broadband and communications to fuel demand for their products.  Allowing AT&T to control the largest part of that pipeline could be disastrous to everyone but that company and their shareholders.

History Repeats Itself

In 1914, the Clayton Act was passed to put a stop to increasing anti-competitive activity and abusive market tactics.  Amazingly, the problems being solved a century ago are back with a vengeance today, all thanks to the endless drumbeat for deregulation, which has fueled mergers, acquisitions, and increased concentration of market power.  That Act cracked down on:

• Price discrimination: selling products and services at different prices to similarly situated buyers;
• Tying and exclusive-dealing contracts: sales on condition that the buyer sign exclusive contracts that force an end to dealing with the seller’s competitors;
• Corporate mergers: acquisitions of competing companies to reduce competition; and
• Interlocking directorates: Boards of directors of competing companies, packed with common members.

Today’s laissez-faire attitude towards government checks and balances helped provoke the Great Recession, corporate scandals of epic proportions, and a revolving door in Washington where regulators end up working for the companies they used to regulate. Just ask former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Three years ago he worked for us.  Today he works for Big Cable’s largest lobbying group — the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.  FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker went to work for Comcast shortly after green-lighting their super-merger with NBC-Universal.

It’s All About the Money. Always.

The only thing stopping AT&T from providing wireless nirvana to rural America is its own unwillingness to spend money on behalf of customers to upgrade its network.  The company claims it didn’t see the value of spending nearly $4 billion needed to deliver expansive 4G service, but suddenly had no trouble at all finding nearly ten times that amount to purchase T-Mobile USA.

Did AT&T suddenly win PowerBall?

AT&T saw crushing a competitor Job #1.  Central Idaho’s 4G service could wait.

Crovitz later notes AT&T “was unusually blunt” criticizing the FCC report, a classic case of protesting too much.  The company got caught with its rhetorical pants down, with a series of evolving arguments for a deal that never made the first bit of sense once you began to dig deeper into their case.

In the end, Mr. Crovitz wants you to blame Big Government for AT&T’s pervasive dropped-call problem that its competitors don’t seem to have.

It’s not the company that owns and runs the network, it is that Obama and his nasty henchmen at the FCC who are responsible!  Who knew?

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg FCC Says ATT Failed to Show Public Benefit of Merger 11-30-11.mp4[/flv]

Bloomberg News reports the FCC found AT&T failed to demonstrate any real public benefit of its merger with T-Mobile USA.  (2 minutes)

Wireless operator (and cable company) Rogers Communications likes to spend big dollars pushing the message Canada is in the midst of a wireless spectrum crunch — a big reason why it wants “equal treatment”-bidding in upcoming spectrum auctions that may include “set-asides” exclusively for emerging Canadian wireless competitors.

But apparently the spectrum shortage only impacts areas outside of the province of Quebec, because Rogers plans to experiment with a new LTE wireless video on demand service it plans to pitch Quebecers, perhaps as early as next year.

Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed told the Montreal Gazette the cable company intends to enter the Quebec market with an “over-the-top” on-demand video service, distributed over Rogers’ growing LTE wireless broadband network.  While Mohamed was quick to say this doesn’t mean Rogers intends to launch a full-scale competitive invasion against provincial providers Videotron, Ltd., and Bell Canada Enterprises, it is pre-emptively getting into the business of serving cord-cutters who drop traditional cable packages to watch online video.

The new service is expected to be accessible on phones, tablets, and Internet-enabled televisions and video game consoles, presumably through a wireless Internet adapter.

Mohamed

“Video for wireless has huge potential for growth,” Mohamed told the Gazette. “It’s sort of the mirror image of (how cable evolved), which went from video, to data to voice.”

Nothing eats bandwidth like online video, and Rogers traditionally caps this and other usage on their mobile wireless network, citing spectrum and capacity shortages. But Rogers sees few impediments serving up certain kinds of online video: namely their own.

That’s not a message the company continues to deliver consumers on its “I Want My LTE” website, part of a robust lobbying effort to get its hands on as much new spectrum as possible, even if it means locking out would-be competitors.  In fact, leaving the impression the company has spectrum to spare is so politically dangerous, Mohamed took the wind out of his own announcement by mentioning, as an aside, their networks still don’t have enough capacity to deliver full-motion video to a large number of customers at the same time.

“I think wireless networks in the foreseeable future will not have the capability to deliver full-motion video to a large number of customers at the same time, even with LTE,” he said. “So what you will see is an integration of wired and wireless, where the wireless network will off-load the traffic to a wired network.”

Rogers’ decision to limit the service, both in scope and range, is also designed to protect itself (and other cable operators) from unnecessary competition.  Rogers won’t offer a full menu of video services outside of its traditional cable system areas in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland, and only Quebec residents (where Rogers doesn’t sell cable TV) will have the option of signing up for the wireless video-on-demand service.

CenturyLink announces their own Internet Overcharging scheme; customers call to cancel their service.

CenturyLink is quietly introducing usage caps for its broadband customers that will limit residential customers to between 150-250GB of usage per month.

The Internet Overcharging scheme was inserted into the company’s High Speed Internet Service Management disclosure page, and suggests heavy users are using an inappropriate amount of data, slowing down the network for other users:

The majority of CenturyLink High-Speed Internet customers make great use of their service and comply with the CenturyLink High-Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement. An extremely small percentage use their service excessively, or at such extreme high volumes, that they violate the terms of their CenturyLink High-Speed Internet Subscriber Agreement. While this high volume use is very rare, CenturyLink is committed to helping these customers find a high-speed Internet solution to better meet their needs.

CenturyLink is announcing the following Excessive Usage Policy (EUP), which will become effective in February 2012:

CenturyLink’s EUP applies to all residential high speed Internet customers and is only enforced in the downstream (from Internet to customer) direction. Video services provided by CenturyLink PRISM™ TV are not subject to the usage limits. The policy has the following usage limits per calendar month:

• Customers purchasing service at speeds of 1.5Mbps and below, have a usage limit of 150 Gigabytes (GB) of download volume per month.
• Customers purchasing service at speeds greater than 1.5Mbps, have a limit of 250GB in download volume per month.

There are no overage charges or metering fees for usage as part of the Policy.

The company exempts their own video service PRISM TV from the scheme.

“It’s another CenturyLink ripoff in action, and despite their claims that they treat all data the same, they certainly do not,” says CenturyLink customer Rob Cabella. “Their video programming is sent from local facilities, as data, down the same pipe as their broadband service, yet they conveniently leave their TV product out of the usage cap equation.”

Prism customers can watch unlimited TV, but face limited broadband usage over the exact same pipeline.

Cabella says PRISM operates much like AT&T’s U-verse.  Fiber provides service into individual neighborhoods and then standard copper phone lines deliver service the rest of the way to customer homes.

“It’s one pipe they divide up for video, phone, and Internet, but they are protecting their video service by limiting broadband use while leaving their television and phone service completely unlimited,” Cabella says.  “Video is the biggest bandwidth hog of all, and CenturyLink invites you to watch as much as you want, as long as it comes from them.”

Cabella thinks the very fact CenturyLink is offering unlimited video disproves their argument about ensuring appropriate levels of broadband usage.

“Their local facilities get overloaded to the point where they temporarily stop signing up customers, yet it’s a video free-for-all, as long as you get your video from ‘the right place’ and that sure isn’t Netflix or Hulu,” Cabella notes.

CenturyLink’s limits will apply to broadband customers signed up for PRISM or the company’s traditional DSL service.  Uploads will not count against the cap.

For the moment, overlimit fees will not be charged and the company will send warning letters to offenders that invite customers to migrate “to a higher speed if available or to a business grade data service that better fits their bandwidth usage.”

Customers who repeatedly exceed their usage limits after being notified may have their service discontinued.

Cabella isn’t waiting.

“I called my local cable company which still offers unlimited service and signed up this morning,” Cabella says. “CenturyLink didn’t even know what I was talking about when I called and said their website must have been hacked or in error.  Why would I want to do business with a company that doesn’t even have a clue what their own business is doing?  Goodbye CenturyLink.”