[nylug-talk] Covad? (was FIOS...)

[George Bourozikas]

On Wednesday 13 June 2007 17:06:33 Peter C. Norton wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 13, 2007 at 03:39:38PM -0400, George Bourozikas wrote:
> > This is why your ISP matters - they get to talk to Verizon instead 
of you.  
> > I've had very good luck with Speakeasy in this regard.  
Unfortunately they 
> > were just acquired by Best Buy and I am willing to bet good money 
that their 
> > service will degrade exponentially starting around now.
> > 
> > I am looking into local options for me and my clients.
> > 
> > --george
> 
> In my experience, speakeasy in NYC needs to talk open a COVAD ticket,
> who then turned around and logged a Verizon ticket to get, say, into a
> switch facility to get to their own little co-lo cage. Verizon would
> take 4 hours to have someone call back, with a further 4 hours
> response time, to unlock the front door, so that the covad dude could
> re-seat a line card.
> 
> That was my boilerplate *best* case scenario. Verizon could also stall
> for days at times.
> 
> -Peter

Sure, that's how it goes.  The difference is that Speakeasy (or any 
reputable ISP) stays on the ball instead of you having to keep pushing.  
I've seen ISP's who don't and this simple scenario can take days, weeks 
to resolve.   Hence my lament about Speakeasy being sold to Best Buy.

My favorite Verizon horror story (not data-related) is the following:

In the spring of 2001 our family moved from the 2nd floor of our 
building to the 9th.

Four weeks and many (cell phone) calls later, we still don't have phone 
service.

Around that time my wife calls Verizon and politely asks for the rep's 
name, explaining that she is a physician - true - and that if a patient 
tries to call her and is unable to reach her she would like to redirect 
any ensuing lawsuits towards Verizon.  This is technically true, except 
she is a research scientist and does not have patients; but they don't 
need to know this.

She is immediately given a 212 number to call.  A real live human being 
answers: "Verizon Presidential Hotline!"

Two hours later we have phone service.

--george