To add to the rants about AT&T Broadband: By way of context: - our system is a former MediaOne system - at least to a degree, the old Continental folks actually knew what they were doing (as opposed to the TCI folks) - that went way downhill when MediaOne bought Continental, and went all to hell when ATT bought MediaOne - I'm on the local cable board, we've been negotiating a renewal for the past year and a half - they WANT to keep me happy and give me phone numbers to call that go to "executive technical support" instead of normal technical support So what happens when I have a cable modem problem: - if I call regular technical support, they insist on running through the "reboot your cable modem, reboot your computer" crap - even if BOTH cable modems in the house have the same problem - then they'll escalate to a senior tech, who repeats the whole procedure - then they'll send an email to "operations" - it appears that the front-line support folks: --- have no access to tools or status information about the network --- have no direct access to the folks who handle routers, dns, dhcp, or any other such equipment/facilities - all that's done by a completely separate operation that only talks to support via email (in our case, it's the RoadRunner organization - I assume for the ex-TCI systems it would be @Home, though who it is now is unclear) --- have no direct access to the folks who handle wires, on-pole equipment, and other outside plant - again, commmunications via email only --- have no direct access to the folks who visit houses and work on inside wires or cable modems - in other words, there are four organizations involved in resolving a problem, and none of them have any direct lines of communication, or even report to the same chain of command - RoadRunner is a separate company for example - every time I call back, I have to go through the same procedure - and finally, they seem to close tickets without verifying that anything has actually been fixed --- - if I start with the "executive office" - the procedure is about the same, except: --- the people I talk to seem to know a bit more --- they'll give me a ticket no. that I can refer to when calling back --- if I really lean on them, there are a few people who seem to be involved in handling tricky problems and have the ability to call around the various organizations -- but it gets a bit silly - I remember talking to a guy in Canada, on his day off, on his cell phone, who was managing resolution of a DHCP problem in Newton, MA Talk about a screwed up organization. ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" **************************************************************************