| William H. Magill on Fri, 22 Aug 2003 09:11:07 -0400 |
|
On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 12:30 AM, Doug Crompton wrote: Well I don't really think my "war" with Verizon had anything to do with DANGER -- Do not do this unless Cavalier also offers RDSL in your area!!!! Because Cavalier is a CLEC, if you switch your voice service to them, Verizon can / will no longer provide you with DSL service. As the saying goes ... been there, done that... I've had DSL services via Bell Atlantic (yeah, that long ago) and DCAnet since DSL was first available in the City. I also told Cavalier (Connective back then) that whenever they got to my CO (Evergreen) that I wanted to switch to them for voice. My DSL service "almost" came up on Bell Atlantic one day after I had been switched to Cavalier. (I had been expecting the switch, but did not have projected date.) At the time, I had access to an assortment of 2nd and 3rd echelon people within BA, but it still took about a week before one of the supervisors I worked with was able to trace down what had happened.: When my DSL order went in I was a BA customer. When the service (DSLAM) was installed in the CO and activated, I was a BA customer. When the provisioning of the DSL line was to happen, I was a Cavalier customer. To make a long story short, BA could or would not (never managed to get a "legal" vs a "marketing" answer on that one) provide DSL service on a line "owned" by a CLEC. I ended up putting in a second, cheap ($8/month) BA phone line for my DSL service; canceling BA (since they would not provide service) as my ISP and switching to DCAnet. (Way back then was also before BA switched to PPPOE, and they gave out static IPs.) But that was long ago. Recently Cavalier began offering DSL service in Evergreen (about two years after their original plan). However, I have not bothered to switch because my DCAnet / Verizon DSL service has been pretty flawless. I run my own line monitor, and can always tell when they make major hardware changes in the CO -- the DSL line starts flapping and lasts about 3-5 days. But other than that, for 2-3 months at a time, the Verizon service is stable. Which is pretty remarkable for a "best effort" service with zero SLA (Service Level Agreement) coverage. From a voice point of view, Cavalier has been equally fine. And cheap. Like most CLEC's or RBOC's Cavalier has their own physical backbone and calls placed over it are cheaper than those they hand-off to other carriers. (This is the practice causing the latest flap over at MCI/Worldcom.) What follows is more than you ever wanted to know about Fun DSLAM / CLEC problems. In my case, I have only one complaint, which I know won't be fixed until I dump my old phone line, and maybe not even then. By the time all this surfaced, the first rounds of Bell Atlantic / Verizon layoffs had hit and all the folks who I knew had taken early retirement. ... If you know how touch-tone works, you'll appreciate this. Because of the "half install," there is a bad DSLAM across my line. The end result is that the tones generated for the row 2,5,8,0 are corrupted by the DSLAM filter. The consequence of which is -- I cannot use certain manufacture's "Voice Response" systems. (Anything made by Octel fails, but Lucent's works fine.) The reason the problem can't be fixed, is because I have a configuration which cannot exist... Verizon equipment on a CLEC (Cavalier) phone line! Verizon will only test FROM the CO outwards using their automated test gear. However, there is nothing wrong "in that direction." Similarly, originating calls (dialing) works fine. The only problem occurs AFTER a call is up AND talking to a Voice Response system. The only way this can be "tested" or seen, is for Verizon to roll-a-truck and for the technician to call back to his Voice Response system, and see that it doesn't work. But, Catch-22 again, Evergreen is an um-manned CO. So when the technician files his report via the trouble ticket system, the CO diagnostic folks down at 9th and Race run their diagnostics from Evergreen outwards and pronounce the line "trouble free." They see no problems, do not dispatch anyone to Evergreen and so everything stops right there. And now, since the line is owned by a CLEC, getting Verizon to roll-a-truck is impossible... because when Cavalier reports the problem to the diagnostic CO, they test the line and report it "trouble free." But since Verizon still charges Cavalier as if they might have to roll-a-truck, Verizon has incentive to "triage" the problem by determining if it test clean from the CO first... and we go round again.
_________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
|
|