Tag Archives: telecom

Home Phone

Customers Ask CenturyLink to Help End Robocalls

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The FCC has confirmed that landline operators can now offer robocall-blocking technology to their users, but most of them have chosen not to do so. Recently, a petition has been filed where more than 500,000 customers have signed and sent their complaints to the company. This act is hoping to find a solution for the customers fed up with unwanted interruptions.

As part of its current End Robocalls campaign, CU dragged plenty of boxes of petition pages to the CenturyLink’s front door at their office in Phoenix.

“What we wanted to do is deliver a petition from over half a million people, calling on CenturyLink to provide customers with free and effective tools to end robocalls,” explained Tim Marvin, who has headed up the anti-robocall campaign for CU.

“My husband and I are retired, so when we start getting calls at eight in the morning it’s very disruptive,” said Sarah, a CenturyLink customer who was on hand for the petition delivery. “My mother is 100 years old, and she gets the same call every day. She’s tried and tried to get them to stop, but they won’t.”

Marvin said, “Everyone receives robocalls.” Particularly pointing out that the Federal Communications Commission alone has received more than 3.5 million complaints about the issue last year. This statistic has evolved gradually after noticing that consumers take a lot of time to file a complaint with the regulators. While the option of the Do Not Call list and strict FCC rules prohibits multiple unwanted autodialed and various pre-recorded calls, most robocalls are actually scammers that don’t care about any kind of violation.

There are plenty of options available with the telecom company that can help customers to cut down such calls, but the company has been constantly dragging their feet in offering the feature. In a recently explained statement, any sort of contact number blacklist can result in the occasional legitimate call being blocked. So the company has given the customers the ability to use some third party device to moderate any suspicious calls.

“The onus right now is on the consumer to navigate these complex problems,” explained CU’s Delara Derakhshani at a recent panel discussion on the issue. “The options are limited in their capability to block calls and they cost money. Consumers are being forced to pay for tools to block calls they shouldn’t be receiving in the first place.”

Marvin said this isn’t about making call-blocking mandatory, but about giving consumers a simple option to rid themselves of these likely illegal nuisance calls.

“What we want CenturyLink to do is start to provide some relief to that annoyance,” he explained outside the telecom company’s office. “CenturyLink has the technology and the ability to give people free and effective tools to block these robocalls before they even get to their houses. I think it’s an invasion of our privacy,” said CL customer Sarah, “and if CenturyLink has a way to stop them, I think they should.”

This is the second petition delivered to CU in a row. The End Robocalls Team knocked on Verizon’s DC office door few weeks back where the whole company decided to sit and discuss the problem with CU. AT&T customers can now expect to hear some good news from the subscribers regarding robocalls in the coming weeks.

Home Phone

Towns Urges Verizon Investigation for Abandoning Networks

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Sixteen cities of New Jersey have asked the state to investigate Verizon as it feels the telecom company has, through neglect, abandoned and retired its copper landline infrastructure in most of South Jersey.

In some regions where Verizon has not been able to upgrade to its fiber network, it has failed to maintain its copper wires that are used to provide telephone service and DSL internet. “In more affluent communities, Verizon has begun to phase out copper with more modern fiber” while “ignoring these issues in communities like ours,” Hopewell Township Committeeman Gregory Facemyer said in the towns’ announcement of their petition.

On the contrary, Verizon denies most of the allegations explaining that it is committed to maintaining a reliable service in rural and urban parts of the state. Verizon confirms that it continues to invest and enhance its network because of the fierce competition for communication services throughout the country.

Earlier, Verizon’s predecessor New Jersey Bell committed to a statewide broadband buildout in a 1993 agreement with the other state authorities in exchange for a price regulation overhaul requested by the telco. While most of the towns are still stuck with the aging copper networks, Last year Verizon had an agreement with the state to meet its obligations with the cellular network instead of wired broadband.

Thereafter, the town’s petition has asked the BPU to investigate and rectify Verizon’s lack of maintenance of copper landline services and facilities. Verizon is also asked to maintain its infrastructure until it completely builds its statewide fiber network. Cellular services are not the sole substitute for landline or fiber services. The town stated, “The failure of Verizon to comply with its obligations… to provide fiber optic service throughout the State of New Jersey,” combined with poor maintenance of copper landlines, “will effectively cripple the capability of customers in rural areas to maintain adequate telephone, data, and Internet service.”

The town claimed that home phone service, internet service, and 911 access have been interrupted most of the times due to bad weather, including fog and drizzle. “Literally hundreds of such complaints have been received in the Petitioners’ communities,” the petition said. The petition further claims that “Verizon has manipulated its customer complaint records” to make the problems appear less severe than they are in reality.

Verizon has elucidated that fiber is the most reliable platform to meet present customer needs. Further, the New Jersey towns said, “Yet for our struggling communities, Verizon refuses to even acknowledge there is a problem, much less offer to upgrade our copper to fiber. Rather than discuss these problems with us, Verizon’s representative has decried our concerns, comparing local government leaders to a modern day flat earth society.”

Sprint

Sprint’s Turnaround Prospectus is Fading Away

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Sprint, the number four telecom company, hasn’t been able to match the offering to customers as compared to its three rivals. Other major carriers have stolen the telecom market, but Sprint still plays the “zero sum” game in the industry. Brand, power distribution and quality in a business where all the other major companies have similar products and nearly the same subscription plan.

Verizon communication and AT&T have around 250 million subscriptions. While AT&T and Verizon are barely growing, Sprint is losing ground and T-Mobile is growing. Both the companies lack the balance sheet heft of the other two. Eventually, it shows up in infrastructure, marketing strategies and the capability to bid for spectrum.

While T-Mobile and Sprint have done well in quality ranking, they are dominated by AT&T and Verizon. In a recent survey, Verizon and AT&T did well and these carriers ranked close to each other. For other smaller carriers to take market share, each of them has to boast some superiority in their respective services.

Among the most important weapons of the carriers, discounts that they offer have been the most promising. This has now become a game of parity. One company offers a free phone with the subscription packages and the other one tries to match up to deliver an attractive offer at a lower price on data, voice and text. Consumers later realize that their charges are almost the same, but the offers are quite different. Some carriers may have unskilled management trying to make offers attractive enough to not lose a meaningful portion of their business.

Over the course of the past few years, Sprint’s share has pathetically fallen 22% while AT&T and Verizon are quite close to one another. T-Mobile growth however ranks highest by 45%. Though all these companies are in fiber and landline business, their major prospects are in wireless.

Home Phone

Sprint’s Offer to Customers: Will Pay off all their ETFs, Device Instalment Balances If They Switch

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In a strategy to attract more new customers and regain market share, Sprint has openly announced that it will reimburse the costs for a customer if they make the switch to Sprint The cost coverage will include their Early Termination Fees (ETFs) and any remaining payments regarding equipment instalment plans, regardless of the outstanding amounts customers have to pay.

As per the telecom biggie, customers who are willing to switch will need to trade in their phone to Sprint from their current carrier in case they owe an ETF or EIP balance amount. Post that, customers will need to activate a Sprint device on Sprint Easy Pay, the carrier’s iPhone for Life Plan, Sprint Lease or pay full retail price providing a new line of service, subject to credit approval. Customers also need to successfully fill out an online registration form at the telecom company’s website and upload a bill proving any applicable charges that need to be reimbursed within 60 days of getting their new phone activated.

Sprint will disburse the amount covering the costs of switching through an American Express Reward Card. The telecom giant will also refund the switching costs within 15 days of the customer successfully filling out the online registration and providing a bill that shows the early termination charge or amount due as device balance.

Sprint spokeswoman Kristin Wallace has confirmed and also clarified that the new offer from of the company is a limited-time deal. However, the company has not yet decided on a termination date for said offer.

Sprint is still offering to cut the service bill in half for those customers who switch from companies like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless. Various Sprint executives have also confirmed the fact that when prospective customers from Verizon and AT&T apply for services from Sprint, they often find plans to be quite a bit cheaper than their bills would be if they were just cut in half. Sprint earlier thought of ending that offer way back in January. However, it decided to go on through all of 2015. As such, it is likely that the company does the same for the new offer as well.

Net neutrality

AT&T Halts Fiber Rollout over New Net Neutrality Push

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After the recent statements made by President Obama and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler regarding the possibility of reclassifying broadband providers under the Title II regulations of the Communications Act for utilities, AT&T has settled to pause its planned rollout of its new U-Verse GigaPower fiber service until the expected argument regarding the issue is settled once and for all. CEO Randall Stephenson said that it is not feasible to make the move investing the amount of money it would take to deploy fiber to 100 cities while being still unaware of the rules under which those investments will be governed. Therefore, it is wiser to simply pause and take time to develop the insights and understanding about how those rules will be implemented and what their impact would be.

Reacting to the statements made by Obama and Wheeler on the Net neutrality push, AT&T threatened legal action if any attempt was made at Title II classification for broadband providers along with other carriers. Although this latest move by AT&T seems logical in the turn of events, it also throws some light on the psychology of the major carrier. AT&T is indeed feeling threatened by the statements made by Obama and Wheeler regarding the new push because being reclassified as a utility would mean that the company would no longer enjoy the advantages it currently does as a broadband provider.

Without the advantages in infrastructure control and local monopoly power that AT&T has been benefiting from all these years, it would be forced to compete against local competitors and resellers, much like its namesake predecessor did when the Bell System was broken up during the 1980’s, which lead to competition and growth in the telephone sector that drove down prices for local and long-distance calling.