OT: internet phones

[Mike Schwartz (PC Support)]

> On Fri, Apr 21, 2006, Fairlight wrote:
> >This public service announcement was brought to you by Mike Schwartz (PC
> >Support & Services, Appleton, WI):
> >>
> >>      SBC has been working with me over the past year or so.  We've
> tried
> >
> >Ah, so you're now being serviced by AT&T?  :(  Funny how they're getting

     Yes, now that AT&T can legally bind up to it's old babies, it is doing
so.  The local phone guys kept me pretty well filled in as to what was going
on the past 10 years or so.

     Several years ago, pre-merger, the local SBC office in Appleton had
purchased all the fiber optic cable and so forth in order to provide DSL to
the city and had the people standing by, ready to start installing it.  Then
they entered this pre-merger era.  They sold off the DSL and optic cables
and stuff that were already sitting in their warehouse, then offered a lot
of their people early retirements, so they could look really profitable on
paper for a couple of years before the merger.  

     Then, right after the merger, they hired back all the people that had
accepted their early retirement bonuses.  They also had to buy back all the
fiber and DSL stuff they had just gotten rid of!

     It was just about impossible to get a phone line installed around here
for several years and it delayed DSL service to much of Appleton for more
than 5 years.  All this was just to play financial games.

     SBC did lose some business by doing this, though.  TDS Metrocom and
other phone companies made some business gains in the city because the few
remaining SBC phone installation guys were just too swamped to get anything
done.  It got so bad that I didn't even bother to call SBC when businesses
needed phone lines moved.  I told my customers to just call TDS right away,
unless they wanted to wait a couple of months to let SBC move the lines. 

Mike Schwartz