[ale] DirecTV & BellSouth

[Chuck Huber]

On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 04:38:23PM -0500, Matt Kern wrote:
> Chuck Huber wrote:
> >I don't know anything they did that was ethically wrong.  They gave us 30
> >days notice which is required by the service agreement.
> >
> Maybe they gave you 30 days, but I've been down since the 16th.

It appears your experience is quite different from mine.  I'm still up,
which makes me wonder why you're down.  Could it be that there was a
failure on your leg of the net and they simply didn't fix it?  Do you
think that they deliberately shut it down?  I'm grasping at straws here.

> There should have been a much longer transition for both customers and 
> employees.

Agreed.  It also would have been many cudo's to Hughes, the parent company
to Direct TV, to have made better arrangement for the disposition of their
DTV DSL customers.  I would have been conducive to a price hike rather than
a shutdown.  A similar scenario is happening to United Air Lines.  In late
2001, their mechanics union refuses to concede on critical issues.  That was
a large reason why those same mechanics are now looking for work, right along
with much of United's other staff.  Quite frankly, I just don't understand how
an airline can make money selling seats for $69.  It just simply costs more
than that to fly commercially.  Either the customer base needs to be willing
to pay more, or they'll have to shut the ailine down.  DTV DSL wasn't a
standalone company like United is, and thus the parent has more discretion
as to what to do.  You can see the parallel here - make money or die.

> They should have waited to lay off half the workforce in 
> order to keep the phone lines up, rather than leaving a message on the 
> support lines with the last sentence, "Do not try to call DirectTV 
> support as they will not be able to help you. <click>".

Not very representative of past service levels.

> >Regardless of all that, we're all in the same boat... looking for another
> >DSL service.  I suppose I'm not as pressed for it since my DSL line was
> >redundant for another ISP.  But I'd still like to get that redundancy back.
> >It was really nice being up when either of the two ISP's were down.
> >
> Lucky bastard ;)

Luck?  Not so sure about that.  I learned that when the cable service went
out, all my bitchin and complaining didn't change the outcome.  It still
took days to restore service.  So I literally took matters into my own
hands and setup a redundant route.  You can do the same.

<rant>
Getting back to shopping around, I'm disheartended somewhat by many of
the acceptable use policies that have been presented in this thread.
 Everything from "you can't do this" to "we're watching everthing you do".
 Quite frankly, I'd rather assume the duty of adequately protecting my
network rather than rely on a bunch of script kiddies to do it for me.
(Those who think they know what they are doing are very annoying to those
of us who do.) I'm looking for an ISP that will give me a pipe to the
internet and forget all the other crap.  I don't need web space.  I don't
need email addresses or POP3 or IMAP or SMTP.  I don't need a firewall. 
I don't need spam filters.  I don't need a "MyAnything".  And most of all I
don't need someone telling me how people are not allowed to communicate
with me (a.k.a port blocking).  What I *do* need is a link to the internet
with a static IP address.  So sell me the service, sit back, and shut up!
</rant>

> 
> >
> >Enjoy,
> >   - Chuck
> >
> > 
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
"The purpose of encryption is to protect good people
from bad people, not to protect bad people from the government."
     Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems
"The best way for government to control people is to remain in
   a constant threat of war." ---Karl Marx
(18 USC 242), which applies to government agents overstepping their
authority:
  "Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation,
  or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory,
  or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or
  immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of
  the United States, . . . shall be fined under this title or
  imprisoned not more than one year, or both . . ."

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