Ma Bell is Back 511
brass1 writes Ma Bell is back. It seems that for the purposes of branding, SBC is changing its name to AT&T once the acquisition is complete. Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."
They aren't as dangerous as before (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care what they call it, it ain't Ma Bell (Score:5, Insightful)
The 80's are back (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time they did something to improve their situation by going back to a name from the 80's. When you're a front end to an Indian outsourcing business whose only product is your name, changing your name has a big impact. Hopefully they'll still have enough money to buy the rasterline globe trademark back from Infosys.
times change (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before Microsoft lose its monopoly on desktop computing software?
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you say accident?
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called.
This would be a good thing. Warrants aren't required when there is reasonable cause. Having a 911 call placed from your line without an answer is reasonable cause.
You had a bad experience, no reason to think that there's some grand conspiracy to have the police check your house.
I had a situation where at college, a friend and I were sitting playing video games with our door open, when two cops came up, and one used the door for cover with his gun drawn and said something along the lines of don't worry, stay back... just plain "stay out of our way." Some other guy had talked to his girlfriend, she was scared he might kill himself, and that he might have a gun, and thus called the local cops where she was at, who called the local cops where we were at, who responded like they did.
I'd say the guy were pissed (he didn't have a gun, and wasn't going to kill himself; his girlfriend was just overreacting). Do I think there was some grand conspiracy for the cops to have come by my room with guns drawn? Hell know, coincidence and accident man. Nothing more, nothing less.
Return of the Trusts (Score:3, Insightful)
Theory of corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the other side of the coin (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cool (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, AT&T had a nifty lab of their own. http://public.research.att.com/ [att.com]
I don't see what the hubbub about all of this is, though. The forced split of AT&T was a success, in so much as creating competition and removing the public's reliance on a single firm. With this acquisition by one of the largest baby bells it brings the company back in line to compete. It's not like they'll suddenly be allowed to buy out Verizon and create another monopoly on that scale.
To top things off, even if they were to obtain a monopoly on the telephone system again it would never be as powerful as the one they once had. Today we have Cell Phones and VoIP. There's other means of efficiently communicating over long distances. They would basically have to buy control over most of the network comprising the US portion of the Internet to be able to come close to what they once had. I just don't see that happening any time soon.
My experience with SBC: (Score:2, Insightful)
What does this mean for San Fran and SBC Park? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, now it's probably going to be "AT&T Park ?!" This is ridiculous. I miss the days when our stadiums had names that didn't change. The 49ers have played in Candlestick, which was renamed "3COM," which has now been renamed "Monster" Park. And now the Giant's stadium is getting it's 3rd name as well. uhh. Time to change the freeway signs AGAIN.
And on a side note, is it possible for me to change my Slashdot nickname to "Pepsi Presents AquaOSX?"
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea (Score:3, Insightful)
It's "unreasonable" search. Not "any search."
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:5, Insightful)
It was basically the phone company for the United States "back in the day". I think I remember thier motto to be:
Go ahead and mock the Bell System. They did step over the line quite a few times. But I don't really think the hodgepodge of companies that have come since have given a rat ass about the customer either. In fact, thanks to telecommunications deregulation, carriers no longer need to worry about pesky little details like quality of service, uptime or redundancy.
How pathetic was it that virtually every single cell tower went down during the Northeast Blackout, yet Verizon and the other POTS providers kept humming along as though nothing had happened. Apparently the cellular providers can't be bothered with fancy new technology like batteries, generators and UPSes. In fact the last time we had a disaster around these parts the local phone carriers (Verizon and Frontier) went around and installed generators into all the central offices to keep things humming until electrical power was restored. There was zero downtime of POTS services. I'll wadger that in that same scenario your cell company would either deny that there was a problem or tell you that they were "working on it" and act annoyed at having to talk to you.
In fact, barring Acts of God that destroyed infrastructure (Hurricanes or Drunk Drivers) I can't ever call picking up a landline phone and not hearing a sweet dial tone. The only gripe I've ever had with my local carrier has been the left hand (customer service) not knowing what the right hand (repair) is doing. I've never had a complaint with the reliability. And unlike all the solutions that have come since I still have a Governmental agency (the PSC) looking out for me.
DoD was against the breakup of Ma Bell for a reason.
WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe Judge Greene realizes that the telecommunications business has changed dramatically in twenty years and that 'Ma Bell' would no longer have a monopoly, so he doesn't actually give a shit. But don't let that keep you from sensationalizing a story, slashdot!
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
I don't see any reason the the telephone monopoly would have ever gladly spawned the cellular telephone network. They might have developed it yes, but they would have had no impetus to provide good coverage and reasonable rates.
Any scenario I could imagine where AT&T was the only phone company providing cell service doesn't look good at all.
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo - SHORT VERSION (Score:2, Insightful)
Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's another great one for you, the remedy for the anti-trust/monopoly wasn't really a remedy. Each "baby bell" was still a monopoly in it's region. You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
What NEEDED to be done is one company handles all the infrastructure. They wouldn't be allowed to do ANYTHING other than maintain the lines...that's it....nothing more....ever....period. With an oversight commitee or something to keep them from price gouging or taking advantage of that situation. Then they sell access to those lines to anyone who wanted it. You would then have your choice of phone carriers anywhere in the US as well as internet providers over DSL without having to STILL pay SBC/Verizon/whoever for use of their phone line, plus transport of the DSL.
I can't tell you how many people HATE SBC and refuse to do ANY business with them. But because you have to have an SBC line to get DSL if you're in SBC's region, you're just S.O.L. How is that NOT a monopoly? I mean really.
Re:They aren't as dangerous as before (Score:5, Insightful)
The $50-or-so price is cast in stone, as a tariffed rate!
Back about 15 years ago, when the price was merely $33 for flipping a switch (no fancy "OK" buttons to click here), a family friend of ours got a phone line activated.
Turns out, the wires were too ratty/old to hold voice service: static, buzzing, dropped calls, and the like.
The phone company came out, and ran over ONE MILE of new wiring, including telephone poles, through a forest, just to reach his house!
This was in a small little rural town, as you might have guessed. No way would he have been able to pay the true market rate for the labor/equipment to install the phone line, which I guess would have cost at least $10,000.00 if he had hired a crew to do it privately. "Universal service" at work!
This is why you're paying $50 for them to hit a button: the cost to you, and essentially everybody else, was $0.05 for 15 seconds of a call-center employee's time. It's just these rare exceptions, that bring the average subsidized rate up to $50 or so.
And, no, the phone company will NOT give him DSL service today, nor install a second voice line. I wonder why?
Re:What does this mean for San Fran and SBC Park? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, with SBC, I pay $11.50/mth per "primary" DSL. That's my cost to SBC to get a customer to my line. Now I say to my LINE because that doesn't automatically bring it to my network like it does with SBC. We also have to pay for a circuit to go from their network to ours. Right now, that's roughly costing me about $10 per user. Then we add on internet bandwidth costs, server costs, and support costs. There's absolutely NO way I can offer DSL to a customer for $14.95/mth even if it's only for 6 months. It costs me about $27-30/mth to supply that DSL.
They don't have to pay for the additional line to their network since it's already on their network. They also subsidize that $14.95 with additional phone service fees. To get that $14.95 you have to also have Caller ID, and Call Waiting at the least.
Basically the same thing happens with these other phone providers. But to offer you service so much cheaper, they're doing it by pretty much killing off their profit margin. Basically, they're probably only making $2/mth off your phone service, but they plan make up for that in sheer volume. However they're burning through their investors' money until they reach the break even point.
But then we have to take into consideration the recent FCC ruling that DSL is considered a data service even though it's offered over phone lines. Believe me, SBC and Verizon WILL find a way to try and twist that to their benefit.
The problem boils down to the people who make, judge, enforce, and interpret laws don't really know what's going on in the industry. They may have a little knowledge...enough to be dangerous. Or they're just thinking from a purely political, business, and/or financial standpoint.
anyway, sorry, I digressed considerably there. Point is sure it's possible, but those companies have to pay through the nose to have access to those same services that can't/aren't subsidized from somewhere else. So what will usually happen if they're cutting the price so low like that is service/support ends up suffering.
Monopoly Subsidized Bell Labs (Score:3, Insightful)
When was the last time that Lucent (the sucessor to Bell Labs) invented anything that was totally groundbreaking like the transitor or UNIX? Never. They are too busy trying to stay afloat (by selling switches and equipment) to fund any significant research.
I wouldn't expect SBC/AT&T to be any different. Either they will only think about quick profits -OR- they will claim (perhaps trufully) that they don't have the cashflow to fund extra research. From SBC Labs' website that you linked to, it looks like their proudest accomplishment was developing a DSL self-install kit. Whoopie.
Re:Ma Bell? Yo no entiendo (Score:2, Insightful)
Where I now live, there's two CO's in the county. There's more than 50 cellphone towers. If you weren't a troll and actually read my message before starting-up your Bell worship, you would have noticed that the first sentence stated that "there's a lot more cell towers than CO's." That's the biggest problem. There's a big difference between 2 and 50+.
It's not my fault your infrastructure doesn't scale. If the cell companies are unwilling or unable to invest the resources to provide the near 100% reliability that POTS enjoys then every cell phone should have to come with a warning about the pitfalls of the service. Think that's harsh? Go back and read about some of the shit that the FCC forced telephone companies to do back in the day.
Then I moved on to the other problem. Many cities don't allow generators. It's as simple as that. Why lie about that to protect your beloved Bell? With my former employer, we fought for almost seven years to get a permit to add a generator to one of our equipment rooms in NYC. The noise and the fuel storage are issues for the cities. If natural gas was available in our building, we probably could have gotten the generator permit in only 5 years.
Beloved Bell? You know absolutely nothing about me AC. My parents worked for the better part of 15 years for a truly local telephone company in a small upstate NY town. Said local telephone company eventually sold out to these guys [frontiercomm.com] after the owner retired. My mother worked in billing/customer service and my father was a line tech. AT&T put them through hell with long distance services/trunks, billing, etc. and they still came out on top. I am most definitely not a Bell worshipper by any means.
All that said I still have quite a bit of nostalgia for the Bell System and the golden age of telecommunications. I miss quality phones with real ringers. The phones that you could drop out of the back of your truck at 65 MPH and they would still work. The phones that were made in the United States. I bemoan the fact that yet another company/group of companies that actually had opportunities for advancement for anybody with a High School education have sold out to modern corporate greed. Do you know anybody that worked for AT&T or one of the baby bells? I know quite a few people that started out as ditch diggers and cable that wound up as regional managers.
As for your generator nonsense I'm still calling bullshit. I would love to see some sources on it. And even if they couldn't get generators they could still buy generator trucks and provide enough battery backup time to get them deployed to the right locations in the event of an outage. In fact, given the nature of the cellular network that might be the cheaper and more logical solution. At least in rural/suburban areas. Of course that won't happen because they have no reason to spend the money because they don't give a rats ass how good their service is once you have signed that two year contract.
Of course NYNEX never had a problem stealing land to put a generator on or with getting the permits. In fact, in several cases the city paid for NYNEX's generator since it provided phone service to a police precinct! So the little cellphone providers are not allowed to have generators, but we had to pay taxes to buy generators for the Bell companies. Explain that one away Mr. Bell Troll.
Perhaps the city would pay for your generators if your service was reliable enough that the police could use it as a primary means of communication. The backup power situation aside, the cellular network still breaks down pretty quickly under unexpected stress or load. With POTS service you might overload the long distance trunks -- but your local calls will still work. In most areas 911 has special routing and priority and will always work. And that's more then you can say for a cell tower that reaches capacity. Verizon Wireless (one of the better wireless carriers) couldn't even keep enough open slots/channels to provide reliable service at the recent air show in my area. And they deployed mobile base stations!