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AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun May 06, 2007 01:53 AM
from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you dept.
from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you dept.
Proudrooster writes "In the past two weeks AT&T has sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service will be suspended in 30 days and permanently disconnected in 60 days. They cited E911 service as the reason. (It is peculiar that AT&T is unable overcome an E911 technical hurdle, since SBC/AT&T is also the local landline company in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.) Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to set up a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those who are unable to transfer their old numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers: 'We are turning off your phone in 30 days, goodbye.'"
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Topic icon... (Score:5, Funny)
quote (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
911/E911's a huge technical/administrative pain (Score:5, Interesting)
The existing system has an interface from the telcos to the emergency operator system that has a large number of assumptions about what the phone network looks like, as well as telco-style interface technology, and would require major redesign to accommodate different technologies - but the emergency operator systems don't have a funding source that lets them do that, so the regulators are making the carriers interface to them like old telcos, even if they really really aren't. Here are some of the kinds of assumptions that need to be worked with:
- A phone sits in one place in a building.
- The building sits in one place.
- The place where the building sits has one police station, one fire company, and one or more ambulance companies that serve it.
- There's a wire from the telco to the building.
- The caller wants the police/fire/ambulance to show up at the building.
- There's a phone number associated with the wire (not the phone.)
- There's a specific telco that supports that phone number, and the telco has records about the building and phone. (Number portability regulations did entertaining things to that one...)
- If the phone's supported by a PBX, and the phone has an individual number usable for outgoing calls, there are telco records that indicate which floor the phone's on, but otherwise the emergency vehicle should show up at the front door. (Even *that* had a lot of complexity to it.)
- If you move the phone, at least to a different floor, or change the phone number, or move the phone number to a different building, you'll let the telco know.
- The regulations can be different for wireline telcos, because they know where the real wires are, than for non-wireline telco-like carriers (like Vonage, and the pre-merger long-distance AT&T.)
- Hey, no they can't! 911 has to work everywhere! - regardless of any infrastructure differences.
It's a really ugly mess (and CALEA makes it far worse for anybody it applies to.) There are some service providers who can handle the interface equipment parts of PSAP connectivity, but you still need to find a way to make your databases have *some* resemblence to the information the regulators need - even if it inherently *doesn't* work that way.For cell phones, at the time the Feds wanted to make 911 work, it was obvious that the wireline assumptions just wouldn't work, because your cellphone is usually not at the place your phone bill or phone number live, and even aside from the FBI wiretap-freaks wanting to radically expand their surveillance capabilities, it's a hard problem if you want accurate location information - and the PSAP structure isn't usually very good at dealing with non-street-addressed location information. I've got a fairly recent GSM-based phone, but the last time or two that I've tried to report car accidents in San Francisco, the 911 operators have connected me to the California Highway Patrol rather than the local police, because the CHP seems to know how to deal with moving callers, while the PSAP system would otherwise need to guess whether I was inside the SF city limits, or in Daly City or Brisbane, based on my description of what freeway signs I was near, and assign the call to the correct police department.
The new regulations on VOIP carriers, as far as I can tell, seem to assume that any carrier who's connecting to the wireline public telephone system and isn't a known cellphone carrier can be treated as a wireline carrier even if that's not what their system does. It's a big problem.
Parent
Re:Topic icon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Topic icon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't you mean: as easily as any EMAIL? Seems more appropriate, IMHO.
IPv6, Fixed Addresses, Wiretapping (Score:3, Informative)
No surprise! Mergers = big, stupid companies (Score:3, Interesting)
Precisely! And higher prices since the need to innovate and compete is now removed. The "new" AT&T is shaping up to be darned similar in topography and attitude to old Ma Bell.
Is anyone really surprised here? "The New AT&T" was just formed from the merger of a number of competitors -- several companies which had to fight against one another and be creative and attractive to win customers realized th
RTFA'd for a change.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:RTFA'd for a change.. (Score:5, Funny)
Probably too many "T"s, those are very rude letters.
Parent
What's the line? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's the line? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What's the line? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.pjstar.com/php/index.php?/news/comment
Parent
Re:What's the line? (Score:5, Funny)
noun verb noun verb verb noun preposition article noun
Mental language processor exception handling 'verb verb'...aborting. See compiler output for details.
Parent
Re:What's the line? (Score:5, Funny)
(The Peoria chamber of commerce voted to cut funding to several charity groups (causes) that support broken cables and frayed ropes; the flood of calls in opposition to this move triggered outages in the phone system.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm standing here, watching the tape drive, spinning around and talking.
I'm standing here, watching the tape drive spinning around and talking.
...answer to a question someone asked me long ago, after a long, long Easter weekend spent upgrading a power utility to VMS V4.
Trauma effects affect language.
Can't We (Score:2)
Doesn't this seem logical and easy? So much of this stuff is handled online, eventually sure we'll all be using wireless + Voip, and then we'll need the router to provide a location, but still this all seems really really easy. Something people would be willing to fill out (Especially as it's so easy to secure [One time use based on 911 contact and then changed, change can be written back to the caller]).
Re: (Score:2)
There isn't an easy "automatic" way to do that in VOIP, but 911 is just a forwarding number anyway. Why you just give them (At&t) your home address, they find the proper police dispatcher number for your area and just link it to your account? Is it THAT hard?
I don't care either way. I used to use VOIP, but then I found I juse my cell phone more anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They know your IP. If it is a DSL they can check it all the way to your local tail and have the same level of reliably identifying an emergency caller as for a normal phone call. All of this is in systems somewhere on the way. In addition to that it has to be checked only once - when the phone signs onto the system for service so the resource used is not that great. Same for cable - the MAC of your cable modem a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer is simple.
They want to charge you the higher rates for a land line and long distance service.
Re:Can't We (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is your ability to communicate this information over the phone. If you're experiencing shortness of breath while phoning for an ambulance, your location is the kind of thing you would want the operator to be able to find automatically.
Parent
Re:911 Operator: can we get your address? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, sometimes people who call 911 are *unable to speak*. You may be having a stroke, to pick an example. Standard procedure for the 911 operator when 911 is called but no one talks on the other end is to dispatch emergency response to the phone number's location, for precisely this reason. Which can be done only when the 911 operator knows where the phone number is, of course.
Chris Mattern
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You know...things like this happen sometimes
Who has a landline? (Score:5, Insightful)
- Adults who live in houses, as opposed to transient youngsters who move from apartment to apartment
- People with DSL connections
- People that understand how 911 works
- People that understand that the landline is pretty darn reliable, and that using only a mobile is a Single Point of Failure
Parent
Odd. (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome back Ma Bell (Score:5, Insightful)
All the monopolistic tendencies that you love and none of that silly customer service stuff...
Not Surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
The Phone Company DOES care! (Score:5, Interesting)
I refuse to wait on hold. Any phone company that offers an answering service for its customers certainly should be able to set one up where its customers can leave a message for them.
My answering service for instance has not been working since last November. I actually think they shut it off deliberately because when I didn't like the over billing I contacted Investor Relations and their legal department. Seems the phone company cares about its Investors. Seems this is a direct line into the corporate management. Go figure eh?
Note: The legal department has to deal with legal issues. If you want something done then write a letter or fax the legal department and threaten them. They are smart and they are high priced help. The Legal Department does not want to deal with this shit either.
Well - seems the COMPANY PRESIDENT phoned me. Seems he didn't like me suggesting that after my bill has been PAID IN FULL BEFORE THE DUE DATE that its not ok for them to restrict my line and seems they also don't like me changing the amount owing and paying what I owe and telling them it is THEIR job to straighten their accounting out not mine and I'm not willing to wait on hold while they do it
Seems they think it is My responsibility to take up with the bank the time it takes for the bank to transfer the money into their accounts. This is despite the fact that they admitted the money was in their account at the time they restricted the service and they simply didn't check. The bank was excellent. Note when the line is restricted someone will answer the phone. This person noted the bill had been paid in full. They left the line restricted for about 4 days. They restricted it the day the bill was due. I paid in advance.
My Position: THE BANK IS YOUR AGENT, NOT MINE. You pay the bank for this service. Not me. If YOU have an issue with the bank then YOU take it up with the bank. Not Me! I told the guy to walk down the hall and ask his legal department.
Next day the bill was corrected. Same day my answering service quit.
Ok. I have quit paying their bill. When their accounting people call me I tell them: YUP. THE BILL IS NOT PAID! If you want it paid, get my answering service running and the bill will be paid in full within 1/2 hour. NO! I AM NOT WILLING TO WAIT ON HOLD. If YOU need someone to wait on hold while YOU do YOUR JOB then get YOUR COMPANY to hire someone to do it. I'm not willing to!
Its at a stalemate. Its been there for 2 months. There are letters in the mail. These are legal threats. If they restrict my service I WILL file in court and I will serve them and I will ask for a court order to force them to reconnect the service. They will lose. They do not have a leg to stand on.
See. The phone company does care? They care about their money. Rather than complain. Refuse to pay the bill until they deal with what they need to deal with. Its really simple actually!
Re:The Phone Company DOES care! (Score:5, Insightful)
You will be charged like it or not, they can and will get the money out of you for a service they are provided. Going "a part is missing" is NO EXCUSE for not paying the bill. If you keep it up they'll take you to court and win, then send a nice bayliff round to remove your goods if you still refuse to pay up.
I suggest you ring up and act POLITELY to the staff and they will help you get your answering service back on. It's all good and well that you go in with your mouth running, but they are people NOT the company, if you appeal to their nature (make them feel you're greatful for their time and help) they are more than likely to help you rather than shrug you off as "that dick who shouted at me".
Remember you're a fish in a barrel, they have all the power (oh yea you have a tiny amount of money, wooo you can buy a lollipop!), even the longest rung (the call centre) have the power over if you get results or not. So if you speak to them as human beings and use a little politeness they will use their little bit (read 'a lot') of power to help you get your service back.
Goto a play like Customers_suck on Livejournal. A lot of it is "this complete back came in earlier, bitched like fuck so I acted politely and pushed her off" but there are also posts like "this nice guy came in, he was really polite and patient even though I was having a horrible day. I was exhausted but bent over backwards to help the poor chap". And maybe you'll see that your mouth and "OMG I'LL SUE YOU! DON'T HOLD ME!" infact make you the biggest bump in your little ego based road.
Be nice, it does more than stops your mouth hitting you on the ass.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They hooked me up, they charged me for Digital tier (no Variety), and they installed Digital tier (no Variety).
Didn't take me all that long to call customer service to bitch. I wasn't (at least intentionally) rude, just like "just thought I'd mention, I asked for Digital+Variety, you only gave me Digital (and only charged me for Digital)" - took it to be an honest mistake, and in a few minutes it was corrected. Fi
Takin the bait Re:The Phone Company DOES care! (Score:3, Informative)
2) I back up the bills paid with paper work.
3) They had from February 2006 until Nov 2006 to fix the bill. They didn't do it. I complained every month.
4) My answering service has not been running from Nov 2006 until now.
5) They have my phone # my fax # and my email address(s). I am easy to get ahold of. I do not put people on hold.
6) I usually pay my bills before the due date. I walk over to the bank which is within about 2 blocks on
Re:Small Claims.Re:The Phone Company DOES care! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to say that you haven't been wronged by AT&T, I'm just saying that believing it's "their problem" isn't correct, because it's obviously YOUR problem, because YOU'RE the one whose answering service isn't working. And instead of acting like an adult you rant like a little kid and pound and stamp your fists and threaten to beat them up if they don't "pick up the ball." I've worked customer service jobs in the past and although I've never refused to help someone based on them being rude I sure as hell wasn't going any extra miles for them. But I also have known other fellow agents who had no remorse about fucking around with people like you that demand, demand, demand. Usually the ruder you are the longer you're on hold, that's not a coincidence.
You're taking the proper action but you need to chill out on the hate speech. Realize that the "Company" is just an illusion and that you're really talking to someone that just needs to pay their rent at the end of the month and doesn't need some dick call them up and refuse to stay on hold, even though the agent most likely can't do anything about it themselves. Take legal action if you must but don't get all bent out of shape about it! Or, you know, you could switch providers....
Parent
Welcome to the new AT&T (Score:4, Funny)
Welcome to the new AT&T.
Fuck you very much.
The Rape of Ma Bell (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Much as I mourn the loss of Bell Labs, on the whole, the breakup of AT&T was necessary, and it was a good thing. Now, if we could only repeat that with Microsoft...
Re:The Rape of Ma Bell (Score:5, Insightful)
What they should have done - and what they should do with cable, power, and all public utility services which have installed infrastructure - is to require separation of physical plant from the actual data/power/other services. No company or conglomerate may own any part of both a plant and a service.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What we really needed was to have the lock on subscriber equipment broken, so I could go out and buy a phone from a third party rather than being
To Customers (Score:2)
My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
911 isn't rocket science, but a lot of the "integration" points are much more manual than you might think. 911 is as serious as it gets - mistakes can cost lives. Many of the smaller players have just a single guy or a couple of guys that are tasked with ensuring that 911 gets their information and validating that they processed the information correctly. A history of mistakes on either side of the street would certainly mean that the relationship can no longer continue until things get worked out - and that means either the technical people start working together in a more friendly manner or that those people get replaced. Either way, that process can be time intensive as there are not a lot of people out there who have experience with the data models, the technology, and the business models.
There is no way that this wasn't a looming problem that was discussed over and over in meetings, but knowing the telco environment it isn't unreasonable to assume that even though the problem was urgent it was not properly addressed. I've been in software design meetings where the subject of whether to use the phrase "Work In Progress", "In Progress", or "Working" took the better part of three days simply because strong personalities were involved that wouldn't let it go (and in the end executive involvement was necessary to move forward).
This isn't a conspiracy to push people back to land lines. It's a case of management incompetence. A conspiracy would require a spirit of cooperation, and that simply does not exist at the management level or at the executive level within the telco vertical.
Its not about 911 services (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're competent, sell them your services for infrastructure design, warn them of the technical foibles, but get paid in real cash, not stock.
AT&T played ball with the NSA so they are allo (Score:3, Insightful)
They are allowed to do anything they want.
They are dropping VOIP customers because IPs can be spoofed and firewalls used.
It was messing with the NSA's equipment in tracking people.
Buisiness As Usual At AT&T (Score:3, Insightful)
VOIP threatens their business viability (Score:5, Interesting)
For DECADES they supported a huge beauracracy through usary long distance rates. A telephone switch is really a computer. As the prices of computers and electonics went down, very little was returned to the customer by way of cost savings. One might note that the present generation of the telecommunications industry has inherited a substantial infrastructure from our grandparents. In many respects and especially when it comes to the "last mile", the industry has not upgraded from what was built prior to the 1960's.
Next, advances in technology have increased the available bandwidth by orders of magnitude.
This puts the telephone company in the position where they bill on T1 or E1 service for instance in the vicinity of $1000 per month for the same bandwidth that they wish to bill $29 bux a month for by way of data services. The problem is further complicated by the fact that for an individual subscriber they want o bill for the voice bits PLUS the data bits. We all know the data bits can carry the voice as well.
The problem is that its all data. The switches and the routers see voice and data the same way. This is not true of antiquated systems used in some 3rd world areas, but it has been true of the 1st world telecommunications industry and especially North America for at least 30 years.
So, how do they justify billing one bloke over $1000 bux and billing the next bloke $29 bux for the same damn thing? How? By trying to keep the underlying technology mysterious. By hiding this from the general public. By dirty tactics like delaying certain packet types. By being deceitful.
The thing is that once _anyone_ has a broadband connection in place, the POTS voice dial up side uses so little bandwidth that it can easily be run over the digital link. The issue is time delays and here is where there are some problems.
The data on the telecommuncations system is multiplexed and thus a byte of data placed into a switch will show up at its destination within a known number of milliseconds. This is not true of the IP traffic.
What one could do if one had control over the "whole system" is set it up so that part of the bandwidth would be filled with time sensitive traffic and the remainder would be filled with IP traffic. This is basically how ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) works now. I won't bore anyone with details.
By doing this we can guarantee that a byte dropped into the channel will arrive within "x" milliseconds. Probably the IP traffic which takes the back seat will also arrive within "x" milliseconds as well. Voice over IP takes advantage of this.
Voice traffic is digitized at 64kB/sec = 8192 bytes per second with switching and signalling stollen from the bit stream. This is where 56kb comes from. Instead of multiplexing the voice bytes, we can instead gather up a bunch of the bytes and drop them in a packet and hope they arrive in time. If we gathered up say about 8000 bytes then we would have 1 second of voice. If instead we gather up say 80 then we have 1/100th of a second of voice. A UDP packet with say 80 bytes or 1/100th of a second of voice will probably arrive in time.
We can also do some cleaver things. We can put some imperceptible delays into the bit stream and create a little buffering - a few milliseconds worth - and gain tolerance of the bunchyness we get in the byte stream of VOIP. As most people know. Its pretty good.
But it leaves the telecommunications industry in a dilemma because they offered a reliable time guaranteed transmission mechanism for voice data via the ATM transmission method and now we don't want to use it because its priced too high. Too high here means higher than what they could sell the surplus bandwidth of their networks for. So in effect by offering IP traffic at $29 per month they cut their own throats and what saves their bacon for now is that most people don't understand how
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact the phone company can and do still do all these things
Thats a matter of philosophy (Score:3, Insightful)
Since it was not profitable, they just scratched off their customers and thats that. Same approach with net neutrality; "Im gonna screw anyone in any fashion as long as i can, and then do away with them"
Bell Tactics all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
But at&t is blowing smoke up peoples asses and they should know it. They OWN the damned E-911 systems and could easily interconnect it. But they won't because they're trying to prop up dying copper pair.
Coax and fiber are the future, not copper pair, at least not for OSP. As it is right now, the regional operators (All three of them!) have pretty much no idea what they have for OSP when it comes to copper. Let me qualify that a little, in the corridors between Boston and New York, then Chicago, etc, cities, they have no clue.
The nice thing about coax or fiber is that it has broadband characteristics, so provisioning is done at the terminal ends, not the OSP side.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What is happening is that certain CallVantage customers have always had trouble obtaining E911 service. In the past, I think what has happened is that those customers got letters saying, "We are working diligently to provide you with E911 service, but you must understand that YOU DO