So, as of this morning, I’ve been moving up in the smartphone world. I awoke at 7am to find my long-suffering, increasingly indignant Treo 400 had decided overnight to up and die completely, so I bit the entropy bullet and picked up a brand-spankin’ new Treo 700 this afternoon (after, I might add, a rather miserable customer service experience that resulted in a good two hours of grappling with the Verizon Wireless bureaucracy. Apparently, despite all the hype about the national network in those aggravating ads, Verizon Kauai and Verizon NYC don’t play very nice together. Really, people, I’m trying to give you my money.) At any rate, I’m looking forward to playing around with the new apparatus, even if I did end up losing some txt conversations I wanted to keep, not to mention some truly righteous Dopewars scores.
Tag: Telecom
Uneven Stevens.
“I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.” Via my sis-in-law Lotta, GOP Senator Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens (R-AK) seems more than slightly confused about the functioning of the Internets, to use Dubya’s parlance.
Spineless Specter, Redux.
“‘You have given up the store,’ complained Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in denouncing the move. ‘You’re just walking away.‘” Playing true to form, Arlen Specter folds yet again and reverses his earlier promise to make phone companies testify about their role in the NSA’s recent data-mining. “The senator from Pennsylvania acknowledged his reversal was forced upon him by his Republican colleagues in a private session prior to the afternoon hearing.”
The Most Dangerous Game.
John McCain, to many the face of campaign finance reform in Washington, struggles to avoid the appearance of impropriety regarding recent donations by Cablevision to the Reform Institute, an independent group with ambiguous ties to the Senator. After his awful performance prostrating himself before Dubya in 2004, I’ve run sour on the mythical maverick — to paraphrase Progressive era Senator George Norris (R-NB) speaking of his colleague William Borah (R-ID), McCain “shoots until he sees the whites of their eyes.” But, still, he’s campaign finance reform’s biggest blue chip, and he should know better than to endanger the cause with this type of shadiness…particularly with anti-reform forces gunning for him. What would be plausible deniability for anyone else seems rather implausible coming from McCain, given his place at the head of the movement.
Bush II, Powells 0.
In something of a surprise move (at least in regards to timing), Michael Powell announces his resignation as FCC Chairman. From the media ownership fiasco to Powell’s knee-jerk overreliance on deregulation as a general fix-all, Powell’s brief tenure probably isn’t going to go down as much other than an experiment gone awry, and further testament to the fact that deregulating markets doesn’t necessarily lead to increased competition — in fact, sometimes quite the opposite. Update: Stephen Labaton previews the post-Powell FCC.
Can you hear me now?
Just skip over this entry if you don’t feel like reading a long-winded customer complaint. Still here? Ok, Verizon Wireless is seriously annoying me. I don’t use my phone for very much — I’m not a chatter by any means, and my telephone conversation skills are legendarily lousy (Ask any of my exes.) Nevertheless, I’ve been using a Palm-Phone hybrid for many years now, and have thus forever lost the ability to memorize nine-digit numbers. So, given that my well-worn Kyocera QCP6035 is on its very last legs these days — I drop calls constantly and my friends and family often sound like they’re underwater — all I want to do is replace it with a spiffy new Treo 650, available on Sprint since November. But Verizon will have nothing doing. They keep trying to ply me with a Treo 600 — the outdated model with cruddy resolution and low battery life — which Verizon obtained a good year after its competitors.
Really, y’all, why wouldn’t you rush to offer your customers the newest phones and assorted gadgets available? (Verizon says its due to their rigorous testing procedures, but most people seem to think it’s because they want to disable the Treo’s Bluetooth functionality, so as to hawk further their lame Get it Now service.) Hmmm…what to do? I’m thinking of switching providers, but Verizon (nee Bell Atlantic/NYNEX) kinda owns this town. Or I might try out this widely-circulated 650 hack, if I thought my soldering skills were up to snuff. We’ll see…I can probably put up with another month or so of terrible phone reception, but after that I’m resorting to drastic measures. Verizon really needs to get on the ball with the new technology. (I’m not the only ticked one, as evidenced by this petition.)
Twisting Armstrong.
After pressure from Democratic commissioners and congressmen, Michael Powell’s FCC announces an investigation into Armstrong-gate. Well, what do you know? I guess they’re just killing time until someone makes the mistake of showing more scantily-clad (non-cheerleader) women at an NFL football game.
The Day After Tomorrow.
“In recent weeks, federal agencies across the vast Washington bureaucracy have delayed completion of a range of proposed regulations from food safety and the environment to corporate governance and telecommunications policy until after Election Day, when regulatory action may be more politically palatable.” Apparently, the Bushies have prepared an onslaught of awful legislation that they’re hiding from us until November 3. While this tends to happen every to some extent every election year, notes Consumers Union director Gene Kimmelman, “‘[w]hat is unusual this time…is the clear pattern of holding back regulatory decisions that will benefit the largest industry players and will drive up prices and market place risks for consumers, ranging from telephones to drugs to the risks of contaminants of food. The pattern of slow rolling will ultimately benefit the largest players and hit consumers in the pocketbook.'” Oh, swell.
Back in Business?
For apparently no reason, my cable Internet access has returned, a day before the second Time Warner technician visit. A temporary reprieve? Let’s hope not…At any rate, if it gets quiet around here again in the next few days, you’ll know why. In the meantime, I’m feeling way behind on the news.
Powell Checked.
By a 55-to-40 vote, the Senate overturns Powell’s media ownership rules. Even if the Senate vote goes nowhere (and between the contentious House and a Dubya veto, that’s pretty likely), this should hopefully awaken Michael Powell to the fact that there is significant bipartisan resistance to his agenda of carte blanche deregulation. Instead of freeing the Big Boys from any entangling agreements, perhaps Powell should work on making them honor the agreements they’ve already made – namely, HDTV roll-out and public interest requirements. This isn’t about big government, it’s about getting our money’s worth. Since we’ve given the networks use of bandwidth valued at $70 billion, we have every right to expect something in return.