Well, it was true that I had essentially no way to contact Comcast when the cable went out -- because I have a pay-as-you- go cell phone and I didn't want to waste an unknown number of minutes on hold. BTW, not that it really makes any difference, but I have Vonage and not Comcast as my landline service. Awhile back I signed up with Vonage to have calls forwarded to my cell phone in case of a power outage. I didn't know if that meant just a power outage (which I didn't have) or if it included the cable going out. Well, calls were forwarded, which is good to know.
I actually was in favor of the cable companies getting into the telephone business -- because I thought it would increase the reliability of my cable service -- and I believe it has. In other words, I thought the company would be more on the ball about preventing and addressing problems if it had the potential to be bombarded with complaints by those having no phone service. As I said, I believe it's worked out that way. I've had almost no problems with my TV and internet service, a big improvement, since Comcast started offering phone service. My neighbor across the hall works for Sprint and I think it was his Sprint broadband card that he used to set up a wireless connection which enabled me to tap into it once he gave me the name and password. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of K.M. Richards Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 1:49 PM To: TVorNotTV Subject: [TV orNotTV] Re: Bad, really, really bad for public relations On Feb 6, 10:44 pm, "Pollak, Melissa F." <[email protected]> wrote: > Apparently Comcast service is out in the entire Washington, D.C. area > and probably won't be back on until Wednesday. > > I'm not looking forward to no TV (except a 7 inch digital that gets > only NBC and ABC), internet, or (landline) phone. I was working for Pacific Bell/SBC (now AT&T) during the years that the cable companies started getting into telephone service, and one thing that I remember from the documentation we were all provided as "ammunition" to keep customers from switching is that the traditional wired telcos (AT&T, Verizon, Qwest) all have backup power systems at the central offices. That means that, even in a major emergency with widespread and long-lasting outages of electricity, there will always be a dial tone from a traditional landline phone from a telco. The joke we used to tell was that "the cable companies want you to switch to them because then you won't be able to call them when the cable goes out" (this was in the mid- to late-90s, before cellular service was ubiquitous) and I remember that when the Northridge, California earthquake hit in 1994, even though my phone got knocked off the hook and buried under a pile of books and papers that came down (I was a couple of miles due east of the epicenter but had no structural damage because the wave traveled on a northwest/southeast diagonal), the dial tone got shut down automatically by the central office switch as the standard precaution after five minutes of no dialing activity but when I restored the dial tone by hanging up for a minute to let the switch reset, I picked up to the familiar stuttering tone that meant I had voicemail messages. 22 of them, in fact, none of which I would have received except that the backup power at the central office kept everything online and the switch, seeing what amounted to an off-hook condition on my line, routed all my calls to voicemail. Perhaps this longer-term Comcast outage will make some people realize it's not a bad thing to keep your wired phone service with your telco. David's notation that Verizon is still up and running is a case in point. (Oh, and something else I have learned from friends who still work at AT&T: In a widespread disaster, your cell phone isn't going to work either, because of the way the wireless infrastructure works ... or rather, won't work under those circumstances. Text messaging *may* work, but no one guarantees that either. I have to presume that Melissa's neighbor's broadband connection, because it still works, is either fiber-optic or DSL, or it likely wouldn't be working now either.) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
