External Modem Recomendation 3990

In a message on Mon, 04 Jul 2005 00:59:09 -0800, wrote :

I don't think the *land line* telco's care. They are a 'protected' monopoly. 'Irritated customers' are irrelevant as far as the telco is concerned. There is only *one* supplier of land-line phone service -- you takes what you can get, like it or not. If all that is available is crap you have no real choice: you either have a crappy phone line or no phone line at all. The most you can do is send complaint letters, which generally get circularly filed... This is basically the reality in rural America. Many of the owners of the land line local loop are also into the wireless business (like Verizon here in New England and in fact all up and down the east coast), and could care less about the land line local loop side of the business. They would rather put money into putting up cell towers and selling cell phones and would be happy if the wires just rotted off the poles. They probably make far more money just on 'setup charges' and 'early termination fees' than they do on providing local phone service.

Verizon has 'upgraded' Western Mbutt's COs from copper-and-iron to 'modern' digital-silicon, by using the 70's vintage 'junk' that they have been pulling out of Boston when they upgraded Boston COs from 70's vintage to 'new' 90's vintage equipment. Most of these switches are barely up to 'spec' (and some are in fact not up to current specs).

As far as the corporate bosses at Verizon are concerned, Western Mbutt is populated by hicks and hayseeds who would be happy with hand-cranked phones and party lines, except that such equipment costs too much to maintain, so anything that is minimally 'modern' will do.