I feel adrift March 15, 2006
Posted by Pontiff in Bellsouth, Pontification.add a comment
My speculation last year that Bellsouth had a secret takeover plan looks like it was right. But do I feel better now that they’re gone? Um.. sort of. Yea. But there’s a certain feeling of loss without their bi-weekly press releases to provide the comic relief so lacking in the mainstream press. Perhaps ATT will take up the mantle. Indeed some of the cometary coming from them appears to suggest they may also have a secret takover plan. Only time will tell.
Bellsouth’s Big Board February 22, 2006
Posted by Pontiff in Bellsouth, Pontification.1 comment so far
Small, innovative companies won’t be able to compete in a pay-for-performance Internet, said Mark Cooper, research director of the Consumer Federation of America.
Yeehaw .. that’ll show them uppidy college educated eggheads a thing or two.
The model of the Internet, until now, has been for providers to charge for access and for innovative companies to provide products people want to use on the Internet, Cooper said at a recent net neutrality forum. You havent innovated anything that you want to charge these customers for, Cooper told Verizon and BellSouth executives.
He’s accusing us of stealing or trying to. Aint that right? He can’t talk to us that way. We have the ‘big board’.
Cooper and some net neutrality advocates say tiered service is acceptable — broadband providers should be able to charge more for 10 gigabit service than 1 gigabit service. But if customers pay for 10 gigabit service, they should be able to run whatever Web applications and services they want, he argued.
Can’t somebody shut this guy up?
ITworld.com – Fight brewing in Congress over net neutrality
Technorati Tags: bellsouth, telecomunications+policy, FCC, Direct+TV,
Bellsouth is a serious company doing serious things February 22, 2006
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The brain trust is keeping to their tried and true policy of milking it. The managment reminds me of the Slim Pickens character in Dr. Stranglove who YEEHAWS as he rides the bomb to certain destruction.
Yeehaw we can’t provide DSL to much of our service areas including those right next to switching stations.
Yeehaw let’s sue our own customers when they try to install wireless in downtowns that suffer from our inablity or unwillingness to provide even a basic level of broadband access.
Yeehaw, lets overbill our customer regularly to see who is on their toes.
Yeehaw, lets not invest in anything that isn’t going to line our pockets now.
Yeehaw, send out a press release that says we are taking a wait and see attititude to everything.. it sounds so conservative and serious they won’t notice its stupid and shortsighted.
Yeehaw boys, lets add a surcharge to the internet for Google and anything else the customers actually want.
Yeehaw paw screw the peering agreements and break out that jug.
Yeehaw they want high speed internet and video .. give em Direct TV and slap our logo on it. That’ll shutem up.
BellSouth appears to be the only Regional Bell Operating Co. that is looking to continue such a relationship with a satellite operator. Both Verizon and AT&T are spending big to deploy fiber-optic networks that can deliver video to residential customers, and have appeared in recent months to be de-emphasizing their relationships with the satellite companies.BellSouth, meanwhile, has held back on deploying video in the manner that Verizon and AT&T have. While the company already has a small cable operation in a handful of southern states, the company has indicated it is taking a go-slow approach to deploying fiber, in part waiting to see how the other RBOCs fare with their efforts.
Technorati Tags: bellsouth, telecomunications+policy, FCC, Direct+TV,
Why Bellsouth’s Tiered Interent is Wrong February 13, 2006
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The BBC has a good piece today about the the possible emergence of a tierd net or one that favors certain provider’s over other. Aside from being touted by Bellsouth (if they were promoting sunshine I’d scurry for darkness) this idea has a million and one things wrong.
Back in 2004, Michael Powell, at the time chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said that net service firms should support “network freedom” and ensure that their users could access all lawful content and attach whatever devices they want to their network connection without any discrimination.Now some of the big telecoms companies want to be able to sell premium services for things like streaming video or voice over IP, and some people are worried that this will eventually lead to a segregated internet.They include Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford University, founder of the Creative Commons and one of the most significant and influential thinkers about the future of the network we have been building for the past 30 years.It’s a big issue.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Why the net should stay neutral
The biggest single problem it will solve is ….. What? What is the problem such a plan will solve for the average internet user ? The answer is nothing is to be gained for anyone and medium sized web based companies down to mom and pop shops and startups are going to suffer which means (Bellsouth please read this if you all know how) EVERYONE WILL SUFFER.
There is nothing to be gained for you unless you’re the CEO of one of a handful of telco types and you’re short on vision and really don’t give a damn one way or another how it affects the longer term prospects of the internet.
Its an election year and if you care about the net and how it affects your life and work then please make a point to see which politicians are taking money from Bellsouth or lining up behind any regulations and impending legislation that may further the Balkanization of the net.
UPDATE. See this story from Business Week for a good analysis
Technorati Tags: Bellsouth, network+plan, tiered+internet
Bellsouth Has a Plan to Ruin The Internet January 20, 2006
Posted by Pontiff in Bellsouth, Companies headed south, Corporate Technology Ethics, Uncategorized.2 comments
Really they do. And they want to carry it out.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — BellSouth Corp. confirmed Monday that it is pursuing discussions with Internet content companies to levy charges to reliably and speedily deliver their content and services.
They’ve figured out that people use only a few big services and further research has shown people want them fast and reliably. The conclusion is typical. They figure that if everyone uses Google why bother with the little Google wannabe that just clogs up the net. Plus.. we — Bell-headed-South — can charge more and do less which has been our mantra for 15 years.
They don’t care and I’m beginning to thing couldn’t figure out that Google didn’t really exist just 5 years ago. Had Bellsouth been in charge it probably wouldn’t exist now because they would have made it so hard to access and slow to load no one would have given it a chance.
Bell-headed ever further -South has had quite the year. They’ve spearheaded a campaign of fear and intimidation against small town America with their wireless lawsuits. When the feds rebuffed their ridiculous petitions for protections they engaged in a campaign to lobby corrupt state legislatures to convince them to pass laws against their own people using wireless to address Bellsouth’s crappy and nonexistent services. Further I think this effort was probably illegal on antitrust grounds.
Obviously such behavior it is unethical if it isn’t illegal. Bellsouth has a corporate policy against ethics. They demonstrated this in the aftermath of Katrina by reneging on an offer to donate an unused building to the people of New Orleans after learning the city was going to implement free wireless in an attempt to lure business back to their flood ravaged downtown.
Now they’ve shown they are all for slowing down the speed of technological advancement with their anti-wireless campaigns. (Actually they are just slowing down their customer’s access to technology services but nothing new there as they can’t supply DSL to their customers anyway.) But this latest is a new one. They want to turn back the clock. They want to revert to an era before the internet by destroying the internet and making arbitrary decisions as to who you would have access to on the net. They of course would decide based on whatever crazy, venal and ignorant criteria of the Bell-headed toward disaster-South management de jour.
Got a call from Bellsouth December 21, 2005
Posted by Pontiff in Bellsouth, Companies headed south.add a comment
NOTE: More on Bellsouth can be found here.
It was from the Office of the President no less. Who said no one but bloggers reads blogs? Maybe it was from the investor relations question I asked but I don’t know how a question about their lack of technical competence would end up at the Office of The President of Bellsouth.net (the internet division of Bellsouth I think).
We’re not talking about the customer relations part of Bellsouth for they don’t have that. I’m sure they have a dept. Probably it’s a door with a sign appearing to lead somewhere but in reality there isn’t anyone there who considers it their job to think about such stuff.
In a nutshell that is what the office of the president tried to do with me. Show me a door with a sign to prove they care.
24 hours and no answer. Investor relations Bellsouth style. December 9, 2005
Posted by Pontiff in Bellsouth, Companies headed south, Uncategorized.add a comment
NOTE: This is a continuation from the other blog here.
Bellsouth has disdain from it investors or potential investors. Either that or they are incompetent in extremis when it comes to basic courtesy. No answer yet and its been 24 hours. When was the last time you waited 24 hours to call someone who wanted to give you money?
Simple question for Bellsouth. Waiting for a replay. December 9, 2005
Posted by Pontiff in Bellsouth, Companies headed south, Pontification.add a comment
NOTE: This is from my other blog but it makes more sense here.
It’s simple enough really. Why can’t they supply DSL to customers in the middle of their service areas? What is the technical problem that cable doesn’t seem to have? Why do they feel they have any chance in hell of surviving the next 5 years if they can’t overcome these problems right now?
So I asked them the question below on the website where it has a nice little questionnaire for “investor relations.”
Okay so it’s somewhat deceptive that I checked “prospective investor” on the form. I wasn’t given another option however. It would have been a lie to say presently an investor and the other options didn’t apply either so this was the closest. We’ll see what they have to say.
Yes, I am trying to analyze your company and its future prospects relative to cable providers who offer similar services. I live in your service area — right in the middle of Nashville by the way — and want to subscribe to your broadband service. Many of my neighbors can get DSL but for some reason I cannot. I’m wondering if this is a system wide problem or if we are an isolated instance where you cannot provide DSL. My phone number in case you can figure this out is 615-xxx-xxxx. I rarely use it — mainly I use cell and VOIP — so you can contact me at the number provided above.
While I fully expect to get no answer I wouldn’t be surprised by any of the following.
1. Total Jive
2. Partial Jive
3. Incomprehensible Jumble and Jive
4. Ingenuous double talk on the part of a low level manager who has no idea what he or she is talking about.
5. A form letter that is generated by a web script.
The Pontiff 