Ma Bell on the rise again!

[Miulang]

I bet Judge Green, who ordered the break up of the once-powerful AT&T (Ma Bell) in 1984 in order to break up the monopoly AT&T had on the telephone network of this country, must be turning in his grave now!

A much smaller AT&T is planning to buy out Bell South, which owns Cingular, in a merger that will have 70 million local-line phone customers, 54.1 million wireless subscribers and nearly 10 million broadband subscribers in the 22 states where they now operate.

Once the acquisition is completed, can a bid by AT&T to buy up Qwest, which does business in 15 states, be next?

The proposed merger will result in a total of more than 30,000 jobs lost. Having once worked in the telecom industry for 8 years, I can see the writing on the wall. Maybe once the communications systems become oligopolies or monopolies, we can get better service!

I can remember the "bad" old days prior to 1984 when if something went wrong with your telephone, you only had to call one number and the problem would be fixed quickly. Now, you almost need to have a degree in telephony to know where the failure is and which vendor to call!

Miulang

[Da Rolling Eye]

Re: Ma Bell on the rise again!

I can remember the "bad" old days prior to 1984 when if something went wrong with your telephone, you only had to call one number and the problem would be fixed quickly. Now, you almost need to have a degree in telephony to know where the failure is and which vendor to call!

I know what you mean. Getting too big for their britches. Had some problems a month back. Called Hawaii Telcom, a mainland number, and had to talk to a machine to get help.

They actually want you to describe the problem to a machine by answering a series of questions. Took fo dayz. Finally got fed up and dialed the "wrong" number, locally. Customer service came on and I told them I'd like to speak to a LOCAL PERSON about a problem. That's what customer service is for, yeah? Talked to the repair tech and took not even 5 minutes. The other number took 15 minutes.

I called back that "wrong" number and asked the girl, "Eh, wots da point? Took me 15 minutes to talk to da machine and I don't know if it got the right info, and it took less than 5 minutes to talk to repair teck who knew what I was talking about and confirmed the appointment." I get a call the next day from a lineman. Says he's going to be there at a certain time. I says, "...bot the machine said between these times." He said he didn't know anything about that.