Service (or non-service) vs Net Neutrality
In the middle of research for posting yesterday, around 8:30 am, Verizon DSL went down. I tried rebooting the Modem, tried resetting it and still no connection. It wasn’t the UBS connection or anything simple, it was the internet connection itself.
Went I tried to bring up Internet Explorer, the only thing that would come up was the Set-up page of Verizon, telling me to install the system.
I called Verizon and after going through line tests and resetting passwords, I still couldn’t get a connection. Finally, the tech checked their system and found the had a problem at the routing station in my area and needed to change out a card.
I finally got the connection back at 7:30 pm, a full 11 hours later. Needless to say, I lost a full day of work on the internet. I did get some offline work done, but that is usually reserved for weekends, so there wasn’t really much to catch up on.
The Big Question…
How are the Telco’s going to handle a two tiered internet when they can’t even keep the existing DSL service running?
The Cable Companies have the same problem, they are always having interruptions of service with their TV programming. Will they fair much better if they try to handle something so complicated as splitting the internet in two?
Can I charge back Verizon for my downtime or loss of revenue for the day? I don’t think so. But if they start charging premium prices for preferred service, I think they may just have to reimburse companies for downtime.
If they start charging Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars to companies such as Google, EBay, MSN, Yahoo for these preferred services and there are outages such as this, you can bet that they will seek reimbursements, refunds, credits, compensation and damages as well as for lost revenue.
But, this is not so much about Net Neutrality as Service.
Service the Telco’s and Cable companies already charge for, and have problems providing. What happened to the $600 Billion dollars in tax credits to improve the communications infrastructure? They say they need the additional fees for premium service to provide for a better infrastructure. If they took the tax credit then we should all have fiber optic cables to our homes and businesses already. Why would they need to charge us now?
If you charged your customers for a service, never performed said service, and came back later to install the service and and charged them again, what would happen to your business? You would be out of business, you would be facing legal fees and law suits that would bankrupt you. The Government would levy fines for double-dipping, and conspiracy to defraud. You could even go to jail.
Verizon and the rest are not only going to get away with this, they are being endorsed by the Congress of the United States.
So, instead of trying to stop them about Net Neutrality, we should hit them where it hurts. If we hold them responsible for the services they are supposed to provide, and start holding them accountable for their incompetence, they may figure it out.
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Help Save Internet Neutrality
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