Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Xerox says, "To heck with customers..who needs them?"
Some years back, Xerox had outsourced all of their customer support to overseas call centers full of people who a)barely spoke English, and b)could only read from a canned script. The result was truly awful interactions if you needed to get a copier repaired or tried to order printer supplies.
But they seemed to figure that out, and for some time, if you called Xerox customer service, you got native English speakers who were delightfully helpful.
But the bean counters counter-attacked. At some point in the last couple of years, Xerox out-sourced all their copier and printer supply sales to CDW.
We have generally been happy with our Xerox printers and copiers, and have only bought Xerox supplies--pricey, but work well.
Recently, two very expensive color toner cartridges both failed within days of putting them in the printer. When we tried to return them to CDW, we were told that defective cartridges have to be returned within 30 days of purchase.
Which is ridiculous.
We always keeps spares on hand, so that if a toner cartridge runs out in the middle of an important customer print job, we have a spare. So we buy cartridges and they might sit on the shelf for two or three months before they are put into use.
So far, we have probably spent at least four hours arguing with CDW and Xerox without result. CDW's attitude is that policy is policy and it is Xerox's problem. Xerox "service" people just mindlessly repeat the policy.
So Xerox willfully sticks its customers with defective products and could care less.
Technology News:
SportClips and the loss of privacy
SportClips has decided that it does not really want to cut your hair unless you give them your full name, your email address, your phone number, and your birthdate.
For a haircut.
Some months ago, they instituted an online scheduling system so that you can schedule your haircut. And of course, there's an app for that.
Technically, you can still walk in, but if you do that, you still have to sign in, and the system thoughtfully tells you that you have to get in line behind everyone that scheduled a hair cut, including people that have not even shown up yet. And so, if you walk in, you are usually told there is a very long wait.
The relentless solicitation of personal data like birth date (for a HAIRCUT!!) is not only tiring, it's an insult. Companies that do this, like SportClips, don't see us as customers anymore, they see us as data. The haircut becomes incidental to the data harvesting.
I now get my haircut at a new local establishment with wonderful service. The staff there are all former SportClips workers. They told me today that business is booming.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Laugh of the day: Telcos complain there is too much competition
The big incumbent telcos are complaining there is "too much" competition.
...and I have some swampland I want to sell you....
Technology News:
If you have ever wondered what happened to RSS
RSS, which stood for several different things, depending on who you asked (Real Simple Syndication was probably the most popular), has withered away. It was designed in the early days of the Web to make it easy to process and read news articles and blog posts from many different sites. Once you subscribed to a Web site using your RSS reader app, you could easily browse and read all the content from that site.
This article is a very detailed history of the technology. For some of us early users of the Internet, the article is a trip down memory lane.
There are many reasons why RSS has faded away, but Facebook could be primary factor. Facebook provides the same "endless news feed" that RSS does/did, and bundles all sorts of other information for you.
It is unfortunate that RSS never really took off. It gives the user much more control over what you read, unlike Facebook, which shoves all sorts of unwanted stuff into your feed. The Internet's domination by monopoly giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon has become a corporate playground where users are the product. It's not a good thing.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Is your security camera spying on you?
Companies like Amazon and Facebook are selling camera-based products that are designed to be used inside the home and outside the home (e.g. the Ring doorbell).
The problem is that we don't really know what these companies are doing with the video pictures and data that are being collected and processed by these devices. Here is a news article that suggests that the images collected by Amazon Ring devices (doorbell, inside cameras) are easily accessible to Amazon employees and third parties..one of which is in the Ukraine.
So personal data is being distributed worldwide without our knowledge or permission. This will not end well.
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Knowledge Democracy:
Will 5G deliver the promises?
This article from PC Mag takes a sober look at the 5G promises. Both the 5G vendors and the big cellular providers want us to believe that "5G" is going to solve all our broadband problems, but like every previous wireless "breakthrough," which typically arrive about every 6-8 years, the promises rarely materialize.
This discusses what 5G might offer for rural areas, and the so-called "rural solution" is actually fiber! The article agrees with what we have been saying for several years--that running fiber down rural roads and then using wireless to connect to homes that may be set well back from the road might be worth looking at.
And we have been studying that in detail. The last time we ran cost estimates to compare fiber drops from the road to the home with wireless from the road to the home, the fiber drops were cheaper. The idea that 5G is ideal for short runs between a fiber cable at the road side and a home set back from the road is almost laughable, since you could do that with existing off the shelf wireless gear for a lot less--probably by an order of magnitude.
Design Nine and WideOpen Networks, our sister company, are not equipment resellers or VARs, so we are free to design networks that meet local conditions and budgets, using the most cost effective equipment.
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What is eating all our bandwidth?
Here is a Cisco study that shows, no surprise, that video is eating the Internet star.
Average broadband speeds are set to double in the next two years, from around 25 Mbps (download) to 53 Mbps.
Much of the demand is from the increasing use of 4K video content. As more and more households cut the cord and start streaming high definition over the Internet, bandwidth use increases dramatically.
And the steadily increasing use of video in ads is contributing. There are few commercial Web sites (at least the ones I visit) that don't have pop up or embedded video ads. You can usually close them or turn them off, but it is incredibly annoying. One news site I visit has two pop up video ads on every page, so you can't really start reading the news until you change focus and close the ads.
And there are other bandwidth hogs. The Nest video doorbell sends video constantly to the Nest cloud servers. They keep it there for a certain period of time so you can go back and review it. On the "medium bandwidth" setting, the doorbell uses about 400 Gig a month. That's the equivalent of somewhere north of twenty-eight 4K HD movies a month....for your doorbell! If you put the doorbell in high resolution mode, the data increases to something around 600 Gig a month...for your door bell!!
Copper based cable networks, no matter what numbers they advertise, are going to be struggling as 4K HD TV and video doorbells become more common.
Fiber is still the future.
Technology News:
Death of TV: Part LXXXI: Cord cutting continues to increase
Fed up customers are continuing to "cut the cord" to their cable and satellite TV providers. The article I have linked to says that 23% of households with wireline broadband have ditched their traditional TV package. As improved fixed wireless broadband continues to become more widely available in rural areas (i.e. no bandwidth caps, more bandwidth), the trend will accelerate even more.
Our studies show that the average household can save at least $35-$55 per month by getting rid of cable/satellite service and just paying for some over the top (OTT) services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.
Technology News:
Fragility of the iGen
The "iGen" is defined as those people born after 1995, which means they are the first generation to have grown up with the Internet widely available. By their teens, iGen kids had access to smartphones, and the results have been sobering.
Depression among young people has increased 60% in five years, and self harm has increased sharply among young women.
Cause and effect is under debate, but there is increased evidence that children and teen access to smartphones, tablets, and the Internet should be managed carefully by parents.
Technology News:
Death of TV: Part LXXX: Who cares anymore?
This recent article from USA Today says that cord cutting is accelerating.
Customers are looking at the incredible variety of content available from OTT (Over The Top) services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, and deciding that they can save money by just paying for Internet and a few OTT subscriptions.
Our internal calculation suggest that this approach can shave between $35 and $55 per month off your telecom bill. The range can be highly variable because it depends on the kind of cable/satellite TV package you have. Customers with several premium services (e.g HBO, Starz) may save more.
We've been surveying tens of thousands of Internet users for the past several years, and the most common complaint is that their cable TV service does not support business class needs like videoconferencing and corporate VPN access. As the way people access content and services, fiber connections can deliver both the bandwidth and the symmetric connectivity (equal upload and download speeds needed for business).
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