NudgeCast 2/5/09

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Tales of a recent trip with a notebook, and staying connected.

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They Want Me Back

Riddle me this! I've been with Optimum a month now with their triple play package. Before I left Verizon, I used their online offerings to figure out that it would cost me $125 monthly for an equivalent triple play package from Verizon's Fios. I went a step further, and called them to see what price I could get from a real live person, and told them I was leaving for Optimum, and why. They quoted me the same $125 price, and of course, canceled my account when I told them I was leaving for Fios.

What makes no sense to me is that these companies won't work too hard to retain an existing customer, but they'll work much harder to get you as a new customer. Last week I got a generic letter from Verizon about their Fios. Just for fun, I put the same setup in online, which is for one standard STB, and an HD DVR for a second TV with the lower tiered internet (10/2) and the phone (there's only one package that's unlimited across the US & Canada). What I don't get is that now the package is going for $114 (12 months, which is what it was before as well).

How the heck can the same thing drop by $120 for the year now that I'm not a customer?

Jonas

Optimum Wireless?

So, now that I'm an Optimum triple play customer, I've been paying more attention to their news lately (previously I was focused on Fios). Anyway, I spotted this yesterday:

Cablevision added a new wrinkle in their competitive fight against FiOS today. While discussing their first quarter earnings in a conference call this morning, the company announced they intend to offer free Wi-Fi to all of their customers within two years. Non-customers will be able to access the network for an as-yet-undisclosed fee.

Apparently this will cost about $100 per customer to put into place. I'm kind of at a loss to understand why they would do this.

First of all, Optimum is in a heavy Fios area so in order to compete they need to do three things: add bandwidth to keep their internet access as fast as fiber, add HD channels to keep up with Fios and satellite (which they're already behind satellite and will fall behind Fios at the rate they're going), and keep the cost down as we're in a down economy and folks are looking to cut costs. Notice that I don't mention wireless access in this mix.

It's pretty clear to most folks that while WiFi is an amazing technology, and ideal for wireless access in most homes, but it just doesn't have the range to do more than that. To do a whole municipality has proven cost prohibitive in most areas, with very few successes. To do all of Optimum's service area is quite ridiculous. To do anything less won't add much to what we have now.

It's not that I wouldn't want to have internet everywhere. For people that only rarely travel, they could dump their pricey cell phone plan, and get a Skype WiFi phone. For an affordable price, it's an easy way to have access to VoIP calls while on the move. I would also imagine that an iPod Touch would be a great gadget with WiFi everywhere.

However, WiFi has too limited a range. They'd have to put a wireless router on every utility pole of their catch area, and this is not gonna happen. Their data network is already overloaded, and routinely slows down from the "BitTorrent effect" everyday when school lets out. Do we need more devices on this network?

My guess is that they're trying to compete with Verizon that won the wireless auction, and will likely roll out devices to make use of it. Maybe there will be a "quintiple play" at some point from Verizon: phone/internet/TV/mobile phone/mobile data, and Optimum wants to be ready to counter it?

The bottom line as I see it is as follows. If Optimum wants to get into the mobile data/phone business, they're gonna need a different technology than WiFi to link their users to their network (eg: WiMax). In the meantime, they should focus on improving their fundamentals, and offering a compelling service at a more reasonable price. So far, they got that right with their triple play as they got me to willingly part with some cash.

Jonas

Too Many Taxes

Remember that expression about the certainties of life: "death and taxes?" Well, I sure do, and especially during the month of April when we file our 1040's it's all too fresh in my mind.

I've been waiting to hear from Verizon to see if they could do better than Optimum for a triple play deal. I figure if they can come in at a similar price, I'd be willing to stick with them. Even given my recent DSL issue, I decided that I'd simply offer competitive bidding, and see where the dollars fell.

So, today I called up Verizon, who I had expected to call and hadn't, and asked for a better deal. I started with the 800 number, and this was for Fios for the nation. The lady explained "the deal" and told me the best they could do was $132 with taxes for triple play with a HD-DVR and another standard STB (set top box). When I told her nicely that she was over by at least $25 monthly, she connected me to the local office "for a better deal." She was also unsure of the taxes as they vary by locality.

I then bounced to a generic service rep, who then connected me to the Retention Specialist. We'll call her Ms. A, and she was far more pleasant than everyone else I had spoken to at Verizon during the course of the last week. I explained to her what had happened with my DSL, now deactivated, and how they were on the verge of losing this household, after decades to the cable company. What could Verizon do?

She told me I could go with a Verizon Unlimited phone plan for $19.99 (Freedom Essentials?). At first I'm thinking that I've been paying around $25 for a copper phone line for years now, and then paying my the call. I was thinking this was a really good deal, and I've been ripped off for many years. Anyway, I then ask her what the tax is on this, and I'm told that it will run around $38 monthly. So much for the bargain.

I plunge onward, and when we add in Fios internet, we are up to $72, including tax, and a 6 month discount. The discount is for 6 months, and the contract is for 12, and then the price goes up by $10 for the remaining 6 months, although I could "call and ask for another discount," but I'm not sure that they'd really do much for you at that point. Still, I plodded on.

She explains to me that because Verizon was traditionally a phone company, the user gets taxed on the phone portion of the bill. Because the cable companies are traditional TV providers, users get taxed on the TV part of the bill. I will say that first, this is unfair to Verizon because it makes their service more expensive just because of taxes that date back to the Spanish American War when a phone was a luxury. However, as a consumer, who hates to pay tax on things as this is hardly value, I'll opt for the less taxing one just on principle.

Next, I ask her about a triple play. I point out my phone bill which has a triple play deal for $94.99. When she adds in the boxes, we're back up to $132. I tell her that Optimum is coming next week, and the $102 + tax price I signed up for,at least for the first year. She tells me that the best they can do is to give me the standard box for free for 12 months, and $10 off the internet for 6 months. It comes to $116 monthly, which is simply more than I'm willing to go for right now.

While she did let me know that Verizon charges $55 for each cable run to the TV set, she also pointed out that the phone won't work from cable if their modem goes out. She didn't point out that they have only 25 hi def channels, although she claimed they were sharper, which I've heard. I thanked her, and told her that I was going to cable. I figure the worst is that I try it, and go back to Verizon, but after the $55 coax has been run to both my sets. All of this from a DSL modem dying...

Jonas

Life In the Slow Lane

You know what they say about "Act in haste, repent in leisure?" Well, after my Verizon DSL modem kicked the proverbial bucket, I canceled my DSL. Suddenly, I'm off the grid, and the WWW. Before I go into "internet withdrawal," I had to figure out a way to connect somehow as the cable triple play install isn't going down till next week due to scheduling issues.

While my last three desktops didn't have a dialup modem, my notebook does. Who knew it would come to this? So, forget about high speed connections, and streaming content. YouTube and flash are the enemy. I'm reduced to email, and low bandwidth websites for my internet fix. Thankfully, NetZero has a free plan that allows 10 hours a month, so I'm sure I'll have them all used up before the Optimum folks show up next week (I wasn't signing up for AOL no matter what).

In the meantime, no word from Verizon. I figure they'll call again when they get the request to port my phone number, which I'm totally guessing, will be later this week. My broken DSL modem has hit the bottom of the garbage pail, and I'm done with DSL. From now on, it's either cable modem or Fios- at least until something better comes along. If Verizon can offer me a triple play offer that's cheaper than Optimum I'll go for it, in the meantime, I'm humming the "You've got cable" tune that they played too many times last summer.

I've had a copper Verizon phone line for as many years as I've been alive, and that's decades at this point. I've also had DSL since 2005. If they wanted someone more loyal to their company as a customer, I don't think they were finding it, and my bill is always paid on time. If Verizon couldn't just send me a modem, and forced me to jump ship, then clearly their customer service is as screwed up as they say it is.

In the meantime, I'm counting the moments till I can download at more than 56k (not to mention upload at faster than a very pokey 36k), and that's downhill with a tailwind. I'll gladly endure a disconnected week because this will be worth it.

Jonas

In a related programming note, there will be no Nudgecast this week as dialup is going to allow this. Stay tuned to hear me rant about how this all turned out.

DSL Modem No Go

I've been a generally satisfied DSL customer from Verizon. While I need to have the overpriced copper phone line to get internet, the DSL (for 768/128 kbps) is a veritable bargain at $17.99 monthly and suits me fine. I've had it since 2005, and to the best of my recollection, it was only down for one night in all that time- a good uptime record my anyone's measure. Even when my phone line died, the DSL kept chugging along.

With that in mind, I present the following. I went to turn on my internet yesterday, and the modem wouldn't connect to anything. In fact, while the other lights for power and connections glowed green on the box, the modem, a Westell 6100, had an orange light for internet- clearly not good. The computer acted otherwise fine, and I had made no changes to anything, so it clearly wasn't the problem.

Hmmmm. I went to check for a dial tone on the phone line, and it was connected so that wasn't the issue. I also double checked the wires and everything was still hooked up fine. Ok, time for some outside help, and a consult of the networking kind.

I called Verizon, and I wandered through their voice menus to "Repairs" and "DSL." They did a line test, and told me it was working fine (which I already knew). The next step was to speak to someone. I figured at this point I was going to tell them that it wasn't working, and they were going to tell me that they had a network outage, or a switch down, and they were working on it or something.

Not quite. The tech support is clearly outsourced, and I had reached somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. The reps accent was very thick, and her English was much less than fluent. She painfully talked me through rebooting the router, and reconnecting the wires to no avail. Then she talked me through some DOS commands to try to manually connect the modem to Verizon which didn't work either. She also had me take the wireless router out of the mix, even though I was plugged into it with a wire anyway. After over 45 minutes of this "just one more minute," and "thank you for providing this information," the two key American phrases she had mastered, we were no further along, and I had somewhere I needed to be, so I thanked her, and told them I'd call back when I could work on this further.

After dinner, I gave it another shot. This time I reached the Philippines, and guys English was quite fluent with much less of an accent. Yay! At least now I could focus on fixing the connection, and not repeating everything four times. After a few minutes of me explaining what had gone on before, him reviewing the notes of my previous encounter, an on hold consult with a network specialist, and my modem was pronounced dead. Ok, now what?

Here's the frustrating part. I was told I needed to contact billing, and they would figure out how to get me another modem. I was connected to them at 7:55 pm, but they close at 8, and they didn't pick up the phone. Clearly mediocre service.

I'm wondering how this will go at this point. If I have to buy another modem, I'll probably cancel the service, and try with something else. The original Westell 6100 was a piece of junk, and I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. The ideal would be if I could just bring it to a Verizon store, and they could swap me out, and hopefully charge me a nominal fee for a refurb.

Stay tuned, Verizon billing opens in 40 minutes or so...

Jonas

How Fast Is Fast Enough?

When I saw recently that the FCC defines broadband as anything over 200 kbps, many of us were kind of puzzled. While those kinds of speeds may have been plenty adequate back in the pre-YouTube internet of streaming video everywhere, it's downright pathetic these days.



So, I was pleased to read that now broadband got defined as 768 kbps or better. This move seems long overdue.

I can also tell you that I happen to have DSL from Verizon that has a 768 kbps download speed (the image above is my DSL across a wireless connection). Is it fast enough? The answer is kind of. For doing email, it's fine. Ditto for light web surfing. I can also stream video from ABC, FOX and Hulu with no problem. However, on some less compressed options, such as video on NBC, or Joost, I have minor to severe bandwidth issues. All of this assumes that I'm not multitasking or this all falls apart and grinds to a screeching halt.

Personally, I'd like more bandwidth, and will get it at some point. Even the Fios lowest tier speed of 5 mbps (I think that's the area I'm in, it might be 10) is a heck of a lot faster. For now it takes a significant bandwidth commitment to download a larger program (even OpenOffice which is around 100 megs can take over 20 minutes) over DSL, so I choose downloads wisely.

I've used dialup, and compared to that, my DSL is light years ahead. I'd just like to remind our FCC that 768 kbps is a minimum for broadband, and as a nation, they should shoot for better, especially in urban and suburban areas. After all, who wants to be at the poverty level for their broadband download speed?

Jonas

Hard To Beat POTS

In case you're wondering, POTS refers to "plain old telephone service." You know, the copper wires that we all used for communication for a century or so. Alexander Graham Bell definitely knew what he was doing, and it has become hard to improve upon the simplicity of a direct copper connection.

What gets all the attention these days is VoIP. This is "voice over internet protocol" that chops up the stream of your voice and then sends the packets over the internet to be reassembled at the destination. This is the digital telephone service that is sold by companies such as Vonage and AT&T CallVantage. It also is the basis of voice chat over IM protocols like Google Talk and Skype. While these are affordable options, and they get the extras right, such as CallerID and call forwarding, they tend to miss on the basics. More specifically, voice quality can suffer because of network traffic congestion (locally because of what else your internet connection is doing), and also 911 location services probably won't be able to find you (e911 attempts to fix this but it has mixed results and shouldn't be trusted when you're choking and can't talk).

Aside from the problem with 911, VoIP often falls short on voice quality. This is because the packets of voice may not arrive at the destination in the correct order. Think about when you watch a video on the internet; there are often stutters and buffering issues. Well, the same thing can happen with VoIP, but when you're trying to have a conversation it gets real old, real fast. While it may be fine for talking to a relative on the other side of the country, it's probably not the best way to seal the big deal for your business as your voice drops out. Your neighbors running a BitTorrent server can definitely screw up your phone call, especially if you both have your internet from your cable company.

By me, there are two other options. These are Optimum Online phone service, and Verizon Fios phone. While not as affordable as Vonage, they both do provide one advantage to a pure VoIP service (I was gonna say connection, but service is more accurate due to the nature of packets wandering around the internet). In both cases they are digital phone services. What you're getting is that unlike VoIP, some priority is given to the voice communication, so that a steady stream of data can be exchanged with no dropouts. In the case of Fios, reportedly voice gets its own frequency of light in the fiber cable so that it doesn't compete with the rest of the data to get to its destination.

I often hear the phrase "cell phone quality," to describe these new digital phone services. I've had a cell phone for almost a decade now, and it's definitely been varying quality. I remember my first cell phone, with AT&T service (way before it was Cingular), and it would wander connections between analog and digital towers. While the digital sounded clearer, the analog got dropped less and sounded more realistic so I can't say which was really better. Due to increasing numbers of users on a limited number of towers, cell phones are all digital now, but the signal dropouts remain.

I see a parallel to our home phone service. While we move from analog (POTS) to newer digital VoIP systems, while we gain capabilities, and in some cases affordability, I'm not sure that the core service, namely voice transmission, is really improving. At any rate, it probably won't matter because over the next decade the future of the telephone is clearly on the internet.

Jonas

Pricey Landline....

Month after month my Verizon phone bill shows up in the mailbox. You may recall that I have both telephone service with them, and DSL internet. While I'm generally satisfied with my internet hookup (hard to beat 768/128 for a broadband bargain $17.99 monthly), I always feel like I'm overpaying on the phone portion of the bill.

The phone, on the other hand, is just under $25 for a traditional phone service. You know, the ol' fashioned copper lines that many have gotten away from. I generally don't make that many calls in a month as I use my cell phone on nights & weekends, and for any long distance or regional calling. The landline is really more for incoming calls, and God forbid, for 911.

When I look at the $25 charge, and the 6 calls that I made on the line a month, and realize that it's close to $4 a call, it starts to become rather silly, and clearly there should be a better way.

When folks think about VoIP, the name that instantly comes to mind is Vonage. There $25 plan gives an all-you-can-eat, err, I mean talk, approach to phone service. While it works out to more than what I'm paying after taxes, there's still something attractive about it, and represents a better value. I recently learned that folks are getting the service for even less which could force my hand (like $14.99 monthly before taxes). The other stumbling block is that my DSL modem is downstairs, and my base phone with answering machine is upstairs. Recall that the Vonage box needs to plugged into the phone and the internet. While I'm not enthusiastic about running my own Cat 5e cable, I'm pretty sure a quality powerline network adapter could bridge this gap.

Yesterday, Bill posted about a new service from T-Mobile, my dreaded cell phone company. It's called the Talk Forever Home Phone. For customers with existing plans of greater than $39 monthly, which I fit into, for a mere $10 a month, they offer an all-you-can-talk phone plan. Sweet! Unfortunately, it's in limited areas (and not by me yet), but while I've been unenthusiastic about their Hot Spot At Home plan (special phones, new router, and mediocre service), this new plan did get my interest. True, I still have the issue about the network box, but for such a low monthly rate, and the ability to keep my home phone number, it could be worth the effort.

The one stumbling block in all of this is that any of these new services rely on a fast internet connection. With a DSL upload speed of 128 (kbps) I'm not sure that I'll be able to both surf and use the phone simultaneously, so this is going backwards to the days of dialup. Not to mention that my DSL is tied to my landline account, and I'm not getting DSL without the phone (smart phone company folks).

I think at this point, the best thing to do is to wait for my phone contract to expire in a few months (begrudingly paying for the overpriced copper in the meantime). Then I can get Fios, which I believe is 10/2 mbps in my area for $39.99. Then depending on the triple play offer, I'll either go with "Fios Phone" or a Vonage service.

It seems to me that at this point, while phone service used to be the star of the show, it's become a secondary player to the internet service, and used mostly for retaining customers.

Broadband: Good Enough For Government Work?

I was reading this report on the apparent "success" of the broadband rollout here in the US, and I couldn't believe it. Typical government adheres to the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" quote that I love to quote.

Here are the salient points:

- broadband is defined as a connection > 200 kilobits per second (which is quite slow, and not what most of us are looking for)

- the US, that invented the internet, is in 15th place worldwide as of 2006 for access to broadband

- if any residence in a zip code has access to broadband, then the entire area gets counted as a broadband area which makes about as much sense as the Electoral College

- 82.5 million broadband lines exist in the US

Now personally, I can't rant too much about my access to broadband. Where I live, I can get DSL or Fios from the phone company (although I had to practically beg for the cheaper DSL a few years ago), or could go the cable route. I have good cell phone coverage as well and could theoretically use a wireless broadband approach if I was off the grid. However, a few towns over, a friend of mine still persists in using dialup due to a combination of cost, and usability issues (more like computer crashing is the tale) when he tried to do the broadband thing. I also hear quite often about folks that are too far away from the phone company for DSL, Fios hasn't reached them yet (they're still in only a handful of states), or cable isn't available.

Can the US do better, especially at the prices we're paying for this? Check out this on South Korea where 90% of the country has access at better than 3 mbps, and the price is only $20 monthly. Now when we have that penetration at that price, than our leaders can think they delivered on their promise.

--Jonas