So, I pledged<\/a> to post once a week and I’m a few days behind on my first deadline. I’m blaming my tardiness on the fact that I only got Internet access at my new apartment yesterday – 2.5 months after moving<\/a>. While I did waste some time in actually initiating the process, the length and complexity of getting my AT&T Yahoo! DSL set up was truly absurd. <\/p>\n \nIf this video represents one of the most compelling arguments for the incapacity of our regulators to make the monumentally important decisions surrounding the issue of Net Neutrality<\/a>, I think my DSL experience is pretty good anecdotal evidence for why the Telcos shouldn’t be left to decide what consumers’ Internet experiences should be. More on that in a moment, but first enjoy the funny:<\/p>\n Ok, now on to the scary… <\/p>\n STRIKE 1: Building a Shitty Website<\/strong> <\/p>\n So, it starts with ordering a new phone line. Of course as a child of the Internet, I start online. Diving into the 25+ screen (no joke!) order flow for a new phone line, I’m only a little miffed the first time when I encounter an error page that tells me “We’re sorry, but one of our systems is temporarily unavailable.” My annoyance continues to grow as I repeatedly encounter errors at various points in the order flow over the next few days (the most painful ones being those that happen towards the end of the flow, only after I have already entered every imaginable piece of personal information – FOR THE 18TH TIME!!!). <\/p>\n After several days worth of failed attempts, I finally break down and decide to just do it via the phone on my next ride up the Peninsula. Well, that idea lasts about 20 min of being on hold while a soothing voice reminds me that not only can I do all of this on their website but it’ll cost me $40 less that way. So, I’m back where I started – just more pissed off.<\/p>\n The fact that this is AT&T’s primary customer acquisition vehicle for their most profitable business and this is the best website they can build is a frightening harbinger of the potential of an Internet controlled by Telcos.<\/p>\n STRIKE 2: The Internet Never Closes<\/strong> <\/p>\n A side-effect of this repeated viewing is that I actually bothered to read the full text of the error page, which goes on past the above quoted to say:<\/p>\n \nWTF!? Have you ever heard of a website that’s only available 18 hrs a day by design? Do I need to say more about how clueless this is?<\/p>\n STRIKE 3: OMFG!!!<\/strong> <\/p>\n I didn’t do a full QA cycle on the AT&T order website (but, I probably did more than they have ever done), so I can’t tell you exactly what the problem was. But when I finally was able to successfully complete the online order flow for my phone line and DSL, I was reduced to using Internet Explorer (instead of Firefox), the corporate LAN (instead of wireless), and it was between the hours of 6am and midnight PT (instead of any frickin’ time I want!!!).<\/p>\n So, then the install fun begins. A week or so after my order is placed, AT&T activates my line remotely and sends me the modem\/router in the mail. When I get home and set up the equipment, it doesn’t work. I follow the instructions for troubleshooting, which includes inserting the back-up CD and running a diagnostic. When this fails, I call tech support. Tech support answers relatively quickly, runs me through another set of diagnostics and determines that they need to transfer me to “Level 2 Support.” Level 2 Support runs me through some of the same stuff and then determines that he needs to loop in the Maintenance Center. After some back-and-forths between them with me listening in, they determine that someone else is required to solve the problem and it will take several hours. They tell me they’ll call me when it’s fixed.<\/p>\n They call and say it’s fixed, I get home and it’s not fixed. I call back and tell them it’s still busted, and they say they’ll call me back again when it’s fixed.\ufffd They call and say it’s fixed, I get home and the hardware seems to be working fine, but my computer still can’t seem to connect to the Internet. I quickly exhaust my troubleshooting options, and am forced to call support again. (Throughout all of my tech support calls, I got relatively short hold times and courteous, if not fully informed, service – this is more AT&T’s problem than mine, as I estimate that support costs for my install probably reached at least $100, and I’m only paying them $12.99 a month.) The operator bumps me around to 3 more people before they find someone who can help me. This fact is made even more disconcerting by the revelation that the final issue to be resolved was relatively simple (if brain-dead stupid) and quite common. <\/p>\n It turns out that the normal installation flow sends users to a registration page that changes some settings on the modem to allow it to access the Internet. However when a user breaks from the normal installation flow for any reason, including to enter the standard troubleshooting flow (i.e. running the included back-up CD as instructed by the manual), this registration page becomes unreachable except by direct navigation – none of which is documented in any of the included materials, nor apparently in the standard tech support training materials. All of this essentially means that as soon as a user encounters *ANY* issue with their install, they will need to call customer care at some point in order to connect to the Internet.<\/p>\n This is a really long way of saying: OMFG!!! What is wrong with you people!? Do you want to be put out of business?<\/p>\n In Conclusion, Do Something People!<\/strong> <\/p>\n This process illustrated to me how ingrained the culture of the captive audience is in a big Telco. Any company with such a pervasive lack of respect for user experience, and thus the user, should not be left to decide how the entire Internet should be presented to consumers. And to those who choose to make an argument that the efficiencies of the free market will sort everything out in the end, I point to this as an illustration of the ineptitude of legacy monopolies in pursuing even their own economic best interests – for it would take a first year consultant about 5 minutes to save AT&T what is probably millions of dollars a year in customer care costs due to sub-optimal installation processes.<\/p>\n Net Neutrality is a serious issue, both for our industry and, most importantly, for consumers. And like most important issues of our time, entrenched special interests are gaming the system to advance their agenda below the radar of a population that can only seem to be motivated to act after it’s too late. The above Daily Show clip of Ted Stevens<\/a> is hilarious, but it should also be horrifying: a man who was born in 1923 and represents 0.24% of the American people is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation<\/a>, which has oversight of the regulation of, among other things, telecommunications, global climate change, space, science, technology, economic development, and sports (yes, sports – see the whole list here<\/a>). It would be bad enough if Senator Stevens was just uninformed on and out of touch with the areas of his responsibility, but it seems apparent that what little instruction he is taking on these matters is relatively one-sided. So, please join me in helping to educate our elected representatives<\/a> on the importance of a free and open Internet<\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/embed><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So, I pledged to post once a week and I’m a few days behind on my first deadline. I’m blaming my tardiness on the fact that I only got Internet access at my new apartment yesterday – 2.5 months after moving. While I did waste some time in actually initiating the process, the length and … Continue reading “On Net Anti-Neutrality”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jstrauss.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}