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Anon | reply to Jake359
Re: Re: AT&T petition watch: 1,043 signatures!
So when do we get the after-action reports from Comdex, slugger? | |
kenyg
join:2001-02-09
Hatboro, PA | reply to Anon
Re: AT&T petition watch: 1,622 signatures!
You can print mine, I'm probably in the top 10-20 myself. Also, you can add XO as another company I'll never do business with again. My only satisfaction today, has been watching their stock slide...
Ken | |
deltat2000
Timor Omnis Abesto
Premium
join:2000-04-13
127.0.0.1
clubs:
| reply to Anon
Re: Re: AT&T petition watch: 1,043 signatures!
Its 10:15pm cst here, and we just got home Chip......it was sometimes ugly...lmao......and sometimes wonderful to see the industry leaders...lol and the end users collide.....I spent some time with a couple of eu's from alaska, and we cruised the booths together.......at about 2:30pm..a couple of att people came on the floor....they saw the looks on our faces as we saw their badges and took the opportunity to flee the building, via the underground loading docks...last I saw of them, they were in the back of a checker cab and heading back towards Lakeshore Drive..spent some time acquiring some new hardware to test while Peg, my better half passed out resumes to all the career booth....as she graduates this spring....I think she wants to be a systems analyst when she grows up...lol....and we both campaigned for the petition.....(you should see a significant jump in the numbers as soon as these people get home from the show...which by the way ends tomorrow.....oh...and another thing....I have been invited to work the S*rint booth tomorrow.....as I was so successful directing anyone who mentioned dsl-hell to their booth......who knows...I may even have stumbled into a new career path..lol
The mood was very somber....the show was not well attended this year and only took up space in one building.....where it used to fill 2 buildings to capacity.
I was able to network with several of my friends @Lucent...and we spent an hour.sharing our experiences with dsl and wireless........they beleive that the current model is doomed......that it will eventually become the sole domain of the telco's....that the current situation is attributed to the presence of too many players on the field..players that had little prior experience providing connectivity on such a large scale....that they didn't invest enough in their support structure...before the marketing wizs like the f*rr*t started making those extravagant promises to attrack herds of users...their words not mine....those were from the mouth of a vp of broadband dev. Their outlook was upbeat about wireless as they have just done a deal to do G3 site thru out the us for a major telco.....so you guys in the boondocks who never had chance to get dsl, can look forward to wireless in your area soon...they even have a cost to user analysis...they project it to be in the 35 to 40 $ range.
Kinda makes you think doesn't it!
Well my friend....I have had way too much caffiene and not enough sleep.....time to go rest, and get ready for tomorrow...till then friends..
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The Future Is Purchased By The Present! | |
deltat2000
Timor Omnis Abesto
Premium
join:2000-04-13
127.0.0.1
clubs: | reply to Anon
Last update I sent you via this thread mysteriously has disapeared @11:pm cst
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The Future Is Purchased By The Present! | |
deltat2000
Timor Omnis Abesto
Premium
join:2000-04-13
127.0.0.1
clubs: | reply to Anon
Last update I sent you via this thread mysteriously has disapeared @11:pm cst
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The Future Is Purchased By The Present! | |
Anon
| reply to Anon
Re: AT&T petition watch: 1,622 signatures!
what a bunch of misinformed people. how can you possibly blame ATT for this ??? its like blaming the person who buys something at a bankruptcy sale or auction for the failure of the business. it makes no sense. if you are really angry why dont u ask your ISP's if they PAID northpoint fully and on time, thats one of the main reasons northpoint went under, ISP's failing to pay them.
read this
"The Biggest Is Not Always The Wrongest"
Ed Stroligo - 4/3/01
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let us look at what happened here:
Northpoint provided wholesale DSL services to ISPs. Like a lot of dot.coms, they thought they had to get big fast, so they spent a ton of money and offered sweetheart deals. They charged too little to even cover the actual costs of running the network, and a lot of ISPs didn't even pay that.
Northpoint knew they were in trouble and sought a merger with Verizon (an offspring on one of the Baby Bells). Verizon backed off principally when they found that Northpoint wasn't too truthful about the revenues they were getting (the Securities and Exchange Commission forced Northpoint to be more honest about that, and a quarter of their claimed revenues went out the window).
Northpoint declared bankruptcy late January, and tried to find a new partner to take them over. They couldn't.
When you go into bankruptcy, there are trustees appointed whose job is to either try to get the business back on its feet again, or at least salvage as much money from the operation as possible to pay off debtors and shareholders.
There were two sets of negotiations going on here. One was with AT&T, one with Northpoint's ISPs.
AT&T is a retail DSL provider. That means AT&T provides you with the service, and you pay them for it. Northpoint was a wholesale DSL provider. Northpoint didn't directly provide you with the service, their customers were the ISPs. You didn't pay Northpoint directly, you paid your ISP.
It's the difference between your supermarket and the wholesaler who provides food to the supermarket. What does this have to do with AT&T picking up or not picking up customers? AT&T couldn't pick you up directly as a customer from Northpoint, because you weren't Northpoint's customer. You were the ISPs' customer, and if AT&T had tried, every ISP would have sued the pants off AT&T for stealing their customers, and they would be right and win in court.
Nobody else wanted Northpoint's operations, for very good reason. If there had been another buyer who was willing to take over the business, Northpoint would have gone to them. If I were in AT&T's shoes, I wouldn't have touched them with a ten-foot pole, and here's why
Imagine two bars in your neighborhood. One charges a quarter a beer, and most of the customers run up big tabs, and pay them months later or not at all. That bar goes bankrupt. If you owned the other bar, and those deadbeats ran over to your bar and insisted on quarter beers and unlimited tabs, what would you say? It's your bar, customers are going to follow your rules, not the rules that caused your competitor to go bankrupt
You would do that even if you decided to buy the barstools and tables and beer spouts and brought them over to your place. That's essentially what AT&T did. That's a lot different than buying the whole bar and running it under different management.
Even when Northpoint was trying to negotiate with the ISPs to stay up long enough to give the ISPs a chance to find new DSL providers, these deadbeats were still trying to milk the dead horse. They offered far less money than it would have actually cost Northpoint to keep the network up. Northpoint would have spent all of its remaining cash just to do that.
But remember, Northpoint couldn't have decided that even if they wanted to, they're under the control of bankruptcy trustees, who have a legal obligation to preserve the assets of the company. These trustees would have been in huge legal trouble if they had OK'd something like that. So they didn't, and I'm sure they told Northpoint to pull the plug when it became obvious the ISPs weren't going to pay a reasonable amount to keep the system up for a little while.
If AT&T had done nothing, they wouldn't be getting blamed for this. If they had waited a week or two to buy the building and servers, they wouldn't be getting blamed for this. Northpoint would have pulled the plug anyway.
AT&T did not pull the plug on anybody. Northpoint pulled the plug because the ISPs wouldn't pony up enough cash to keep it going for a few more weeks. Blaming AT&T rather than the ISPs is like blaming the guy who buys the bar fixtures for the bar going bankrupt, not the deadbeat customers who didn't pay their bills.
You may ask, "Why didn't AT&T buy the bar rather than just the bar fixtures?" The answer is simple; it was a lousy business. You don't buy lousy businesses and keep running them the same way.
If you ask, "Why didn't AT&T provide transitional funding?" let me ask you, "Why didn't the ISPs?" Who was using Northpoint? Not AT&T, the ISPs. Why were the ISPs only offering $3.2 million dollars, when at least $15 million would have been more like it? It's like insisting that the guy who buys the bar fixtures has to provide quarter beers and unlimited tabs to all the deadbeats for a month, rather than saying the deadbeats should at least pay their tabs and pay at least as much as the beer costs.
If you say, "AT&T should have done this for goodwill," what about the ISPs? They actually signed a contract with you saying they'd provide the service. Don't you think they have far more reason to care about the goodwill of their own customers than AT&T? Why do they get off the hook when it comes to goodwill?
The truth is they didn't give a damn about you. If they had, they would have ponied up enough cash to keep Northpoint going for a few weeks. They played chicken with Northpoint over your service, and they lost.
If somebody told you, "I want you to pay $15 million so somebody else can get a free ride" what would you tell them? This is like telling the guy buying the bar fixtures, "If you want the bar fixtures, on top of the fair price for the bar fixtures, you got to pick up some of the unpaid tabs, and keep the deadbeats drinking for a couple more weeks." Would you do that? If you wouldn't, then why should AT&T?
If the ISPs had come up with a reasonable amount of money, this would not have happened. They refused, so Northpoint pulled the plug.
Whose fault is that?
I'm not saying you shouldn't be mad, I'm just saying at whom you should be mad.
If I were you, this is what I would do:
I would write to my ISP. I would ask them if they paid their bills to Northpoint on time, and if they didn't, why they didn't care enough about you to do so.
I would ask them if they owe any money to Northpoint, and if they do, why they didn't care enough about you not to.
I would ask them why they didn't care enough about you to come up with any contingency plans to shift you over given that they were dealing with a bankrupt company with nobody interested in buying them as a business.
I would ask them why they didn't care enough about you to notice that Northpoint was running out of money, as put on public record in statements filed with the SEC by the bankruptcy trustees (it took me a whopping ten minutes to find that out).
Then I would wait for, but not expect, an answer.
I wouldn't blame the guy who bought the barstools. | |
Anon | said by jadtexas:
what a bunch of misinformed people.
Thank you, Jad. It's always nice to be corrected by a complete stranger who is both rude and impolite.
I've seen the web article that you just paraded before our eyes. It was on »www.overclockers.com, I believe. One of your well-meaning six-fingered cousins already pointed out the error of my ways with this same parable of the two bars.
I read it, I understand it, but I don't agree with it. Let's change the scenario around a bit, shall we?
Let's say that instead of the two bars, the one run by a foolish twit with no business sense, and the other one run by a sensible business man who avails himself of an excellent bargain, that we're talking about two oases in the center of the desert.
The first oasis, poorly managed, is overrun by people and animals eager to drink water cheaply. Soon, the first oasis no longer has potable water, because of the general rush of the masses, the sand and the silt, the general lack of care, and the fact that the first oasis had set too low a price on its commodity. Despite the fact that the first oasis has been destroyed through ignorance, the people and animals still thirst.
The second oasis is closely guarded and the owners allow no one to drink, and then, in the failure of the first oasis, they buy up not the tables and the taps and the bar-back, as in the story of the bars, but instead they buy the water itself, pump it through a filtration system to clean it, and then store it in hopes of putting it to commercial advantage.
The people who were the clients of the first oasis, despite their stupidity in not being responsible customers, still need the water that is now in the hands of the second oasis. They have everything that they need to drink the water: cups, bottles, straws, glasses. But the second oasis, even though they know that the water is like life itself for the thirsty people, refuses to consider the greater good or to formulate a plan by which the thirsty can continue to drink, albeit in a more controlled and considered fashion. Instead, they choose to charge much more than some of the people can afford, to use the rest of the water for other purposes, and to act in such a fashion as to make the people distrust and hate them.
With this parable I hope all of you who think we are whiners can come to see how some of us feel in all of this. We would gladly have responded, had we known the alternative, to our ISPs and to NorthPoint with support had the chance been offered to us.
I for one would gladly have paid $20, or $30, or even $40 more per month to continue the service that I had. Instead, it appears that we are going to be in the hands of the ILECs, who offer much less for much more and no service whatsoever.
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Hello. My name is Chipinphilly. You killed my DSL. Prepare to die. | |
Anon | lol, thank you chip, it seems when you have nothing intelligent to say you respond with crude insults as evidenced in your prev posts, maybe it makes you feel more adequate *shrug*
ie the six fingered cousins remark
all i have to say is good luck on your ridiculous boycott and lawsuit campaign , to bad you cant sue someone for being an idiot, you would be rich. | |
Anon | reply to Anon
one other thing, the comparing ATT's decision to not buy the customer base of northpoint and someone's withholding of water or food from you is patently ridiculous. | |
Anon | reply to Anon
said by jadtexas:
lol, thank you chip, it seems when you have nothing intelligent to say you respond with crude insults as evidenced in your prev posts, maybe it makes you feel more adequate *shrug*
ie the six fingered cousins remark
all i have to say is good luck on your ridiculous boycott and lawsuit campaign , to bad you cant sue someone for being an idiot, you would be rich.
Okay, try it like this:
LOL, thank you, Chip. It seems that, when you have nothing intelligent to say, you respond with crude insults, as evidenced in your previous posts; maybe it makes you feel more adequate, [*shrug*] e.g., the six fingered cousins remark.
All I have to say is good luck on your ridiculous boycott and lawsuit campaign. Too bad you can't sue someone for being an idiot, you would be rich.
There... all corrected for you.
They say that poor spelling and grammar on the 'Net is the equivalent of bad breath and BO. Have a Tic Tac and some Right Guard, then, my good man.
Oh, yes, i.e. and e.g. don't mean the same thing. Illud est means "that is," and is used in place of "namely" or "viz." The other one, e.g., means "free example." Have a care with the way you use them, please.
Back, then, to my gift of toiletries to you: I'm not sure that they can overcome the stench of flatulence and the odor of glycerin that hang about you like a damp fog. Not only are you an orifice, but you are a dysfunctional one at that. Nonetheless, I thank you for the opportunity to impart an English lesson.
I'm amazed that you have so little to do that you've researched my past postings. Perhaps, with luck, you'll develop some outside interests and finally get a tan and start brushing those teeth.
Ta-ta.
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Hello. My name is Chipinphilly. You killed my DSL. Prepare to die. | |
Anon
| thanks for the spelling and grammar lesson, this guy edits my posts for me and he tells me to find something better to do ? AND he did it all with a dialup connection lol
as far as getting something to do why dont you fire up that 56k modem and search for another DSL company, in case you hadnt heard northpoint got shut down, LOL.
im sure ATT is preparing to die since you started that petition, oooooooh.
[text was edited by author 2001-04-06 05:01:49] | |
Anon | Here's number 1698 on the AT&T petition:
go ATT !! great decision and goodluck on utilizing the new equipment, you did nothing wrong and these people are trying to hold you to blame for the demis of northpoint, which you played no part in, this petition is nothing but a testament to several peoples inability to take responsibility for their own decisions.
Now, then... who could this be, with their grammar, spelling, capitalization, and typing skills? I guess it doesn't really matter. 1 comment out of 1705 is .05865102639 percent, just a little less than 1 percent, wouldn't you say? Thanks for the bump.
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Hello. My name is Chipinphilly. You killed my DSL. Prepare to die. | |
Anon
| One more thing:
This was the fortune that popped up after I posted my reply to that amusing opinion within the petition:
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men
have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" Since I already got mine for the day, I wonder to whom it belongs?
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Hello. My name is Chipinphilly. You killed my DSL. Prepare to die. | |
Anon
| reply to Anon
Re: Emotion ruling over logic
u guys are really sad....i understand that ur dsl is out and its a very big inconvenience to everyone but think about what ur doing. Its a waste of time. Why do all of this for nothing. AT&T has no obligation to anyone, they bought the equipment fair and square, if anything you should be cryin to northpoint, which wouldn't help either...newayz the point is that ur spending all this time and emotion and things that do now really matter.....deal with it | |
Anon | blah blah blah... I'm dealing, the order is in for a new line through another CLEC and ISP.
And no, not all of this is for nothing. Many small businesses saw their data stream and their cash stream interdicted in the same stroke. Injustice demands reaction.
Someone should have done something to provide an out for the thousands and thousands of commercial accounts. Logically, since AT&T purchased the important bits that would have helped sustain the network, the better choice would have been for them to create some sort of ad-hoc lash-up to ease people through the crisis, especially given the depth of their pockets.
Instead, everyone involved, the court, AT&T, NorthPoint, and the ISPs seem to be trying to walk away, whistling, with their hands in their pockets as if nothing happened. The profundity of 120,000 entities losing their connection at once transcends the normalcy of a simple BK liquidation and creates a situation that calls for new rules, new laws and an inquest. Were you a stockholder of NorthPoint, I'm sure that you would be more interested in discovering the truth, especially since it's rumored that Fetter pocketed a $45K bonus one day before she signed her resignation and broke camp.
Something stinks, and neither you nor a hundred trolls are going to dissuade me from finding out what the source of the stench is.
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Hello. My name is Chipinphilly. You killed my DSL. Prepare to die. | |
Anon
| who cares about finding out who did what and why its all a waste of time the point is you have no service the quickest method is to continue to get everyone up and running. You can cry injustice whatever...u can sit here and cry for all i care, i don't. It doesn't matter AT&T has no obligation to you. | |
Jake359
join:2001-01-01
Bradenton, FL
|  reply to Anon
Re: AT&T petition watch: 1,725 signatures!
Girls, girls, girls. All this gets us...nowhere. I personally like both the analogies. I could probably make a cute one up too. So we're all remarkably intelligent and eloquent. SO WHAT.
We're stuck with dialup until we can work something else out. A little warning would have been nice. We didn't get it. My anger is mostly directed at my ISP, who basically now offers me nothing and dropped my contract, and my whole class of service, like a hot potato (or potatoe even, wouldn't want to spell anything wrong). Where I am, the quality of the lines is so bad, and the distance so far, that all I can get is what I had, 144/144 IDSL, but now at a higher price. There's a lil' wireless company building a tower as we speak that'll hopefully give me service, at a reasonable price, and 10x the speed, within about two weeks. So I'll deal with it. And I'll probably keep my domain hosting and email etc. with XO, as I can get just that a la carte for pretty cheap, and I won't have to go through more pains to move it elsewhere.
AT&T is not, unfortunately, at fault. It would have been nice for them to step up, but the didn't, and really why should they. NorthPoint ran it's business into the ground, but they don't exist to be mad at anymore. I personally think Liz could've coughed up her bonus and her exorbitant salary. But I wouldn't have, and neither will she.
I'm mad at Qwest, whose infrastructure is so crappy I can't get decent service, just 9 miles from a major metropolitan area. And the town I live in has the greatest population density of any in the state, and is serviced by one CO. Ridiculous. it's the dang 21st Century man, and they still hook us up with tin cans and string. I'm going wireless baby, as soon as possible. Wires are 19th Century technology.
Beam me up.
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the opinions expressed are those of the author. your mileage may vary. the surgeon general has made no determination as to the health benefits of this post. | |
jseymour8
join:2000-07-29
| 
Where I am, the quality of the lines is so bad, and the distance so far, that all I can get is what I had, 144/144 IDSL, but now at a higher price.
Yeah, well... the CLECs figured out that selling IDSL at below-cost rates and with returns on their investment in start-up costs that don't show for years doesn't make good business sense. To bad it looks like they developed that business sense too late.
There's a lil' wireless company building a tower as we speak that'll hopefully give me service, ...
I wish you luck. Truly I do. Sprint Broadband Direct (for example) didn't work out here in the Metro-Detroit area. It looks like they're either in maintenance mode (for what they did sell) or perhaps backing-out of here entirely. Or at least that's what I'm told. (Disclaimer: I haven't asked Sprint Broadband itself yet.)
I'm beginning to hear murmurs that wireless will not be the broadband savior that we'd all hoped it would be. The "one central tower serving a big radius" only works in the flatlands or other wide areas in which a significant portion of the potential subscriber base can "see" and "be seen by" the tower. Highly variable terrain, surrounding clusters of tall buildings and trees kill it. The idea of applying cellular techniques to fixed broadband access runs into a number of problems. Not the least of which are having to provide big pipes to each of the cells and having to put up the cells or micro-cells. Even mobile cellular providers are running into problems getting municipal approval for building new cells. People don't want either the visual pollution or exposure to microwave radiation in their back yards.
If all this sounds pretty grim, well that's because it is 
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Jim Seymour & Karel the Computer Cat
Agents Provocateurs Extraordinaire
irc://irc.dal.net/#dslreports | |
Jake359
join:2001-01-01
Bradenton, FL
| said by jseymour:
The "one central tower serving a big radius" only works in the flatlands or other wide areas in which a significant portion of the potential subscriber base can "see" and "be seen by" the tower. Highly variable terrain, surrounding clusters of tall buildings and trees kill it.
All good points. This particular outfit seems to just be trying to fill a niche:
Put a few towers in locations where they can reach a large number of under-served users w/in a 2 mile LOS (line-of-sight) of the cell. An area like mine is a perfect example. There are a large number of homes, it is an upper-middle-class to affluent area, and it is under-served or not served at all by the telcos and wholesalers. So they have a good idea and will most likely get a lot of customers, just through word of mouth. Sticking to small under-served high demand areas such as this, will most likely make them succeed, and their growth plans seem to be to take it nice and slow, research well, and get a site up where they have a high potential. I think it'll work
and I'm jonesing for some speed after 10 days already.....
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the future is wireless... | |
Anon | Locally-centered wireless is a cool idea.
Personally, I've always wondered why they couldn't use a line running along the poles as an antenna. A few years ago they were talking about the death of traditional phone wires, that we were all going to wind up in some sort of a low-intensity cellular scheme with antennas on every block.
Amazing how the stuff that was in Popular Science 20 years ago is becoming popular fact. I'm still waiting for the personal helicopters!
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Hello. My name is Chipinphilly. You killed my DSL. Prepare to die. | |
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