Rodent Regatta

Since December 18, 2002, I’ve been without cable modem service. Twenty minutes ago ”a guy” showed up, climbed a pole, measured the signal and found a faulty connection. No explanation.

That’s almost ten days of outage. If I pay them double what I’m paying now, I can ”generally” get problems fixed within 24 hours. That’s right; pay them more and they can ”generally” miss yet another customer service ”goal – not promise.” The extent of the stupidity at the other end of the customer service line into Road Runner is indescribable.

No wonder every major corporation has at least two providers of bandwidth for every important connection. Think about how much money (at least half) a corporation could save on bandwidth expense if a reliable provider with a well-measured customer service system could enter the market. Unfortunately, too many of the recent entrants have patterned their approach after the centrally-planned, quasi-monopoly carriers of yesteryear.

Other than possibly energy, there is no greater opportunity in all of technology today than the one involving the bandwidth service into homes and small businesses. Will it be Wi-Fi? Will it be fiber to the home? Will it be a dependable, hybrid cable service? Time will tell.