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| Wednesday, June 28, 2006 |
| "F*** Verizon" |
| Current mood: crazy |
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Forgive me Father, for I have sinned... wait, I'm not Catholic, I'm a dirty Methodist... never mind that then. Anyway, Cray was bad. As a tech, I know what it is like to have some idiot bitch at you, a simple pawn of the larger conspiracy that is your employer, as if you had some sort of control over any aspect of the company. You'd figure with such insight and knowledge, that I would never stoop to the depths of the common user and attack a lowly tech for the sins of the parent company, but alas, I did just that today. For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about (and that would be everyone but myself at this point), I'll bring you up to speed. I have dial-up. I hate dial-up. I want and, for what I do, need broadband to be somewhat productive. Where I live, I have very few options. I could get satellite internet for an obscene amount of money, and then I would have piss poor service with a "fair-use" policy that throttles me back to 56k if I actually try to use the service for anything. Verizon has a monopoly over land based phone lines here. Verizon offers absolutely no broadband service here. The "city" of Bone Gap, which has a co-op phone company instead of Verizon, has DSL. BONE GAP DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ROADS! Seriously, if you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about. If you have to drive up over a sidewalk to continue down a "road," then it is an alley. But, I digress, as usual. I thought I was going to get some wireless broadband from an Evansville based company who has a transmitter on a tower around 2 miles away. After their second visit, we had determined that their 2.4GHz system wasn't going to be able to penetrate the dozens of treelines between my property and the tower with anything less than a 100 ft tower... and then I'd probably still need some kind of mesh antenna for greater gain. And THEN, I still might not be able to get a good enough signal. So, the plan is scrapped. It's dial-up for me forever. So, how's the rant get back to Verizon? Well, after my failed attempt at escaping dial-up, I went online to search for options I'd missed. So, randomly checking on Verizon's site to see if they offered their, as it turns out, piss poor wireless broadband here (which they don't, or course), I see a link that allows me to chat with a live Verizon representative. Usually, I would have spared the poor peon the trouble, but today, I clicked it. I had a very simple question for "Stan." I asked Stan why Verizon continues to strive to offer more service options to already flooded metropolitan markets while smaller, nearly untapped markets where they could easily attain a monopoly, and where they already hold a monopoly on land lines, are left with absolutely no options. Initially, he gives me the company line about DSL being a complex technology and you have to be within a certain range of an exchange. I expected this answer. So, I ask him very simply why they don't offer DSL to a building next door to the exchange. Now he applies another company line about DSL equipment being very expensive and Verizon would have to have a certain number of customers in the area to offer the service, otherwise it wouldn't be cost-effective. Hmm, Verizon has a monopoly on the land lines and offers $14.95 DSL in other areas. I'd say they'd have a decent customer base here. I think the key here is "cost-effective." If you were Verizon, an evil, godless corporation who reveled in the misery of its customers (and some say they power their cellular network off of it), and you wanted to make as much money off the people you had trapped in your monopoly, what would you do? You COULD offer them DSL, with an investment in some upgrades that would easily pay themselves out with revenues gained from selling the service. OR, you could do absolutely nothing, thus having no extra investment, and many users will end up paying twice what they would have paid for DSL so that they can have an extra phone line to use for useless dial-up. Wow, that's a simple decision for Verizon: f*** the customers. F*** you Verizon, and the bloody, plague-ridden black horse that you rode in on. F*** your lack of service. F*** your monopoly over us. F*** your cell network with dead zones that cover half of some counties around here. F*** your stupid logo and your Jared Fogel looking fruitcake "can you hear me now?" guy. Most of all, f*** your bulls*** slogan. Of course you mother f***ers never stop working for me. You never f***ing started! Anyway, sorry for the hard time I gave you, Stan. I've been there. Wait... no, f*** that, f*** you too, Stan. You knew what you were getting into when you started working for them. |
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