NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] AT&T's T-Mobile Merger Ploy: Rewarding the Worst
AT&T's T-Mobile Merger Ploy: Rewarding the Worst
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000831.html
Greetings. One of our characteristic traits here in the U.S. is that
we seem to love big things -- big banks, big insurance companies, and
especially big telecommunications conglomerates.
Quality is not usually the relevant issue. We appear to fundamentally
admire -- or at least tolerate -- corporate bigness, even gigantism,
even when substandard quality (or worse) are the hallmarks of the
enterprise or people involved.
This isn't to say that vast scale cannot be combined with high
quality -- witness Google's organic growth and overall very high user
satisfaction ratings, for example.
But in some sectors, bigness prospers not due to superior quality, but
simply by leveraging "too big to fail" fears on a colossal scale.
This is why the Wall Street crooks who very nearly drove us into a
depression are still raking in the billions -- party time continues
for them essentially unabated. They know that they are pretty much
untouchable since their tendrils so deeply pervade society that
significant retribution against them might be suicidal for society at
large.
AT&T, in its bold move to buy out T-Mobile USA for $39 billion,
believes that it has similarly become "too big to fail" -- too big to
be refused by anyone, including government regulators.
In the decades since the 1984 breakup of AT&T, we've watched as Ma
Bell has carefully reassembled her component parts. For many years
I've used the example of the T-1000 "shapeshifter" cop from
"Terminator 2" -- merging its blown-apart pieces back into a
solid whole -- as an analogy for AT&T's resurrection. This has now
become something of a common meme when talking about AT&T.
In the case of the T-Mobile merger, the T-1000 -- oops, I mean AT&T --
has trotted forth a number of predictable supporting arguments.
Better coverage. Lower rates. This time AT&T is even claiming
they're being *patriotic* by assimilating their lower-cost
competitor -- a bigger AT&T is better for the USA, they claim.
There will be much written about the technical and economic aspects of
this proposed merger in coming weeks and months.
But just for the hell of it, let's explore a more fundamental aspect
of AT&T and the T-Mobile transaction. This isn't "Jeopardy!" --
but I'll put this issue in the form of a question anyway:
Must we continue rewarding the worst, simply because they are so
large?
And in many key respects, AT&T is the worst. Many surveys show their
wireless services as being the lowest rated in the country. This
isn't just a matter of overloaded networks and wireless expansion;
they have become decreasingly consumer oriented for years in virtually
every respect, with their quality declining ever faster as their size
has grown.
This is not a condemnation of AT&T's employees overall. In fact, some
of the most frustrated people I've talked to regarding AT&T, are their
own customer service reps and technicians, who have watched their
support resources decline precipitously, but dare not complain for
fear of losing their jobs in a terrible economy. I've seen AT&T techs
bend over backwards to try deal with botched-up circuits and
situations, only to be blocked at every turn by higher level
management.
To be sure, AT&T was on a downward quality spiral for a long span, but
once their new corporate masters in Texas got control, the quality
disintegration became palpable.
This isn't just a matter of wireless either, it's across the board
with AT&T. Recently here in California, they retroactively increased
the cost of low-income lifeline services by about a third. AT&T reps
who happened to mention this to me related how they were flooded with
calls from angry or crying subscribers wondering how they were going
to maintain phone service. These AT&T reps felt mortified by what
they were forced to tell customers.
And pray nothing goes wrong with an AT&T data circuit. The saga of
one circuit I've had for many years is unfortunately representative.
It's a circuit I have to keep running since no reasonable alternatives
exist at my location. At one point, it was going down every 30 days
or so, just like clockwork. It would take me hours on the phone to
get it built back up, every time. This went on for months. None of
the normal tech support channels (neither locally or outsourced
overseas) could figure it out. Basically AT&T told me "tough luck."
Finally, using high-level AT&T contacts that most people naturally
don't have, I was able to reach an AT&T engineering manager (in Texas,
of course) who ultimately figured it out. As I had suspected, there
was a database problem in their provisioning system. But no
reasonable, normal means of finding this existed. I was eventually
able to get this particular problem fixed. But what of ordinary
customers who don't have my contacts? To use the vernacular, they're
basically screwed.
And don't assume that the circuit in question has been all roses since
then. In fact, the local interface hangs routinely requiring a power
cycle to restore. This can happen every few days, or multiple times a
day. More frequently, less frequently, no pattern has ever been
established -- other than my suspicion that higher outside
temperatures increase the failure rate. It's been like this for
years. AT&T can't fix it. The techs tried really hard, equipment was
replaced and so on, but the techs admitted that they simply didn't
have the resources to properly debug in such situations any more.
One night, fed up with the circuit hanging for hours so frequently, I
went on a rampage with a soldering iron, and literally threw together
a hack to monitor the interface and physically power cycle whenever
the interface hung. It worked, and I'm still using it constantly over
two years later. Here -- take a look at what I call the "AT&T Fail
Reset Hack": http://j.mp/hMvPOt (Lauren's Blog).
It's that nightmare of wire and solder just to the right of the
punchdown blocks. Your ability to read this blog posting partly
depends on the actions of that silly homemade device.
How often does the data circuit still hang? Here's a link into
the actual real-time reset log dating back to the original night
of installation. See for yourself: http://j.mp/hUX6c0 (Lauren's Blog).
I should never have had to deal with such a situation -- and been
required to build such a hack -- to keep a relatively expensive AT&T
circuit up and running.
Yes, these are but individual examples, but they are emblematic of so
much that has gone wrong with AT&T as they've become larger ... and
larger ... and larger still.
AT&T's being again so enormous is simply bad news for wireless
subscribers and users of any other telecommunications services.
AT&T's anti-consumerism and massively declining quality are the
opposite of patriotic.
To reward AT&T's enveloping mediocrity with the prize of T-Mobile USA
wouldn't just be "unthinkable" as various observers have already
suggested, but would be nothing less than a full-fledged travesty.
--Lauren---
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Google Buzz: http://j.mp/laurenbuzz
Quora: http://www.quora.com/Lauren-Weinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com