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Marco.org: Rambling about Verizon

Apple only has two options: either give up the mass market in the U.S. and accept slow growth in U.S. sales while Android undermines the iPhone’s base, or launch a CDMA 1X+EVDO Verizon iPhone very soon.

How soon is difficult to say: the sooner, the better. Technology is almost certainly not the limiting factor here — I imagine a CDMA iPhone 4 is ready to go, or close to it, today — so it’s a matter of other influences, such as product timing with the GSM iPhones, supply chain delays, or contractual issues with the carriers.

I have always assumed that Apple has, in fact, developed CDMA prototypes of every iPhone generation. This would be just like the switch to Intel processors, when it was revealed that they’d been doing concurrent builds for years. I don’t know what regulatory hurdles they have with the FCC in order to pull that off, but it just seems like the sort of thing they’d do.

I imagine the sticking point is Verizon itself, which likes to be the company playing hardball in any negotiation. Verizon presumably imagines that its position with the Droid is stronger than Apple’s position coming from AT&T, so I can’t imagine that a Verizon iPhone is a fait accompli except in pure hardware terms.

The people I know with Droids like them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t look longingly at iPhones too. Aside from the perceived superiority of the network, the only other advantage seems to be the full keyboard. My Droid friends all seem a little jealous of the quality of iPhone apps in general, but they’re still able to use apps despite the rough edges. And having hefted both devices I still prefer the form factor and concomitant virtual keyboard of the iPhone, and in DC I don’t actually have a problem with AT&T.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Tags: Apple Verizon iPhone Droid
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The saga of the DSL continues.

This morning a Verizon tech called to say he was on his way, and that he’d been told to make this his first stop. He showed up a little before 9:30 and was gone by 10:00, having been to the main telco closet and tagged a circuit.

I headed over to the old apartment not long after that, and at 11:45 I got a phone call from that same Verizon tech saying he was on his way back, but he didn’t need to get into the unit, just the telco closet.

And then about 1:00 I got a call on the home phone from a number the caller ID couldn’t quite figure out, that turned out to be somebody with “Speakeasy” in India (I think), saying that their technician was at the building and he couldn’t get into the telco closet. So I hopped in the car, drove back to the new apartment, and found that it was once again Tony the Verizon guy, on his third trip of the day.

So I went with him and the building facilities manager, down to the telco closet (which is on the G1 level, not the G2 level as the previous “Speakeasy” guy had said it was). He connected up his special phone guy orange phone, called a number, was on hold for a while, and eventually found himself on the phone with somebody named Gaurav. Gaurav said the loop wasn’t there. Tony said it was, and there began a back and forth where Tony would short a pair, Gaurav would initiate a test, and the test would fail. Eventually Tony asked if Gaurav could send a tone down the line, and it turned out he could. So Gaurav sent a tone, but Tony had to go to his truck to get the piece of equipment that actually detects said tone.

Once Tony returned, he found the terminal that was producing the tone, they ran a couple tests open and short, and called it done. He then tagged that terminal and left, presumably for good.

Now. Tony WORKS FOR THE COMPANY PROVIDING THE COPPER LOOP, and he initially tagged THE TERMINAL THAT COMPANY SAID WAS ACTIVE. Note that (1) there was no tag before Tony got here, despite what Verizon had initially reported, and (2) Verizon also reported that they tried to come yesterday and had no access to the building DESPITE THE PRESENCE OF A FRONT DESK STAFFED TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY. Also note that (3) TONY WAS GIVEN NOT ONE, BUT TWO INCORRECT TERMINAL NUMBERS. It was only after somebody on the other end tried to test the loop again that they found out the circuit wasn’t really there.

Now. Verizon doesn’t get all the blame here. The “Speakeasy” guy mentioned in the last post said the Telco closet was on the wrong floor, and he also couldn’t manage to find the correct closet for my apartment (which is on the third floor). But this is a brand new building, with fresh copper everywhere. There is no justification, at all, for Verizon’s inability to deliver and tag a circuit in brand new wiring.

Tags: DSL Verizon Verizon sucks Covad Speakeasy apartment Park Place tag copper loop

Verizon Does (Rather, Doesn’t Do) It Again

We moved into our new apartment today. As soon as we’d been told our contract was ready (which turned out to be three weeks befor the contract actually was ready) I made arrangements with Speakeasy to move my DSL service. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly. The Speakeasy guys are usually great, which is why I still spend the extra money they cost me every month.

On the 13th, Verizon told Covad the loop (the physical copper circuit from the Verizon central office) was ready, and Covad tested it and accepted it. Covad then told Speakeasy it was OK, and I got an email notification that the on-site installation had been scheduled for the 19th. Since we had to push back our move-in date, I had the appointment rescheduled for today.

So today, the “Speakeasy” guy came (I guess he was a contractor for Covad) and he failed to find the loop in the building. Seriously. He said he’d been to the main telco closet in the parking garage, and there wasn’t even the type of hardware that Verizon had said they’d used to terminate the loop. Weirder, though, was that he also said he’d then gone to every floor closet in the building and hadn’t seen our unit number in any of them. I did a little snooping, and it seems that for telco closet purposes our unit is on the second floor, with a nonexistent unit number. And the correct floor closet is in fact on the third floor, even though our apartment is on the first (which is contiguous with the second, due to the layout of ground-floor retail space in the building).

Anyway, the “Speakeasy” guy didn’t seem like he could be bothered to try to figure out what was really going on, so he raced out the door and we still don’t have DSL. This might really be Verizon’s fault, or it might be Covad’s fault, or it might be just a miscommunication about what apartment we’re actually in. Luckily my laptop picks up somebody else’s open wifi, so I’m going to borrow that until my own is working.

Foo.

Tags: Verizon Covad Speakeasy DSL telco closet