Neglecting the Marginal Profit Telephone Customer
OSP Magazine
I am a rural telephone customer and I and my neighbors are sick of being ignored when it comes to the bandwidth business. We are just far enough out from our telco/provider that they don't provide broadband services to us. They would have to invest in a fiber feed to our remote and all of the associated electronics to provide us with ADSL. I'm talking about my telco/provider because they impact my life and my "work from home" business, but I know many of the large telcos also treat their "country" customers the same way.
The comments that I get from the telco management team that is responsible for our area is there are not enough customers to justify the investment. If our telco had proactively maintained our copper plant and had upgraded the feeder plant to our remote on Stone Road proactively, it would have been a slam dunk.
Instead they reactively maintained a substandard POTS service with terminals and pedestals exposed to the elements and water in sections of air core PIC cables by transferring faulted circuits to other vacant cable pairs until there were no quality circuits left, leaving customers in the lurch.
If you think that I am blowing smoke, come to my house and join me in my morning walk and I will show you example after example of neglect in our copper infrastructure. Do you really think the problem is confined to only my copper distribution plant?
Please don't think that I am limiting my comments to just my telco/provider. They are actively bailing out of my area, and I think that they are leaving the state of Oregon and 13 other western states to concentrate on high impact areas for their Triple Play endeavor. Other telcos are following their lead and bailing out of the analog POTS service business and embracing the digital world.
In a discussion with an area manager who services a rural area in the Midwest, POTS customers with service problems are literally hung out to dry by directives from his upper management team.
In one of his areas the first level supervisor has 7 field technicians available for dispatch on service complaints. On the average each technician can handle 4 POTS dispatches on a daily basis. If more than 27 complaints are taken they are rolled over to the next day. If any POTS/ADSL customer calls in he is moved to the head of the line and the POTS-only customer is pushed to the end of the line.
Average repair time for the POTS-only customer is 2 weeks. There is a method to the upper management's decision on this process. Upper management sees the POTS-only as a losing proposition quoting cost-per-POTS-lines-only is too expensive to maintain. By ignoring the out-of-service POTS customer, that customer is forced to use cell service in the interim -- and that customer will cancel their POTS service and revert to cell service for their needs.
I see quotes on a daily basis on the expense of maintaining analog-POTS-only, and the ROI is negligible. That is true when companies are wasting countless dollars with too many unnecessary truck rolls working only on the effect of unacceptable service with corrupted data bases instead of proactively fixing their infrastructure, repairing faulted splices, sheath damages, and replacing sections of air core cables that have water in the sheath.
All of this is done by the management team to attract the shareholder to invest in their company.
I wonder if things would change if shareholders knew how much money you reactively waste on a daily basis.
What’s your take on this subject? Leave a comment and get the conversation going.
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Rural Broadband
I agree with the situation as described by Don. We have heard it time and time again that the ROI does not justify providing service to most rural customers. I live in Rural Hawaii but I am very lucky when it comes to rural service. Kohala Ranch on the Big Island is the largest development of its type in the US with hundreds of 1,3,10, and 20 acre home sites. The underground infrastructure was built years ago and Time Warner decided to make this their first Fiber to the home project. I am sitting here with the fastest service posible and outside the gates its like Don says deterioateing OSP that was built years ago and not maintained to provide enhansed service.
One might think that we could just turn back the process of big Telco's taking over small Rural areas to increase their customer base. By creating small RUS funded operations that could provide the service needed to make profit. Of course we would need investment such as the REA in 50's and 60's.
Rural Broadband Lookout!
Beware! The new move is to sell the expensive rural plant currently inaccessable to the IPTV ( better than 50 Meg ) or broadband. They then qualify for federal funding and turn to Uncle Sam for a handout saying that they can now provide the IPTV to ALL of their customers.
Occasionally this will allow someone who knows how to maintain the plant and is concerned about his customers to move in. But it also allows holding companies or unprepaired buyers to move in. These buyers do not have the resources to maintain the terrible rural plant much less extend the rural broadband.
I understand the technicians in areas of Hawaii have recently been working 7 days a week for arount 2 years just trying to hang on.
I agree with the situation
I agree with the situation as described by Don. We have heard it time and time again that the ROI does not justify providing service to most rural customers.