Tomorrow will see the launch of Verizon’s Hub home phone offering. Engadget has a post describing their initial hand’s-on experience with the device. Also, Telephony Online has a nice piece on how Verizon went about developing the Hub in conjunction with OpenPeak.
In reading through both these posts I find myself left doubting that Verizon is going to get much traction with the device & service.
I was incensed as a result of the past weeks trouble with the cable card swap that Comcast imposed. After considerable time spent on the phone in the afternoon I detailed the situation in a blog post early last evening. At the point when I wrote that post we had no clear path to solution, just the promise that someone would call us back.
Shortly after the blog post went live a twitter message was automatically sent to highlight that post. This caught the attention of @comcastcares, which is Frank Eliason, Director Of Digital Care at Comcast.
Frank & his staff are based in Philadelphia PA. The fact that Comcast has been using Twitter to stay on top of customer service has been known for some time. I had some cursory interaction with them during the long service outage in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Nothing makes my blood boil like dealing with Comcast. I have never encountered a company with such complete disregard for their customers.
First A little Background: Chapter 1
Until early in 2007 Houston was Time-Warner Cable market. Houston, much of Texas and parts of Missouri were run by a partnership between Comcast and Time-Warner, but it was branded with the Time-Warner name. Early in 2007 that ended with Comcast assuming Houston operations and Time-Warner taking the rest.
Now no-one loves their cable company just as no-one has warm fuzzies for an ILEC. We had no great love of Time-Warner, but since then our experience with Comcast makes us long for the good ‘ole days of Time-Warner Cable.
I just finished listening to Brough Turner’s Ecomm 2008 presentation called “Own The Network.” His talk is available for download from IT Conversations, the accompanying slides and notes are available from his blog.
Mr Turner’s key assertion is that we insist upon owning the dark fiber to our homes & businesses. This is very similar to David Isen’s idea of “Fiber From The Home.” It’s a principle that I can completely get behind.
Fast Company TV's Robert Scoble recently paid a visit to Meraki Network's to profile their newly announced wifi mesh products. He shot a nice interview video with their CEO. They mention streaming media both for video and audio (Skype) Use…
Today I was tasked with making a trip to the Los Angeles area. So I found myself on the way to the airport at 8am, counting my blessings that I didn’t need to take the extremely early first flight out of Houston, but rather the more sensible 9:30am departure. I get to the airport an hour before the flight and breeze through the security process with 45 minutes to get to my gate.
Normally I’d go to the President’s Club lounge for coffee, a bagel and a last minute check of email. Unlike many other airlines Continental provides free wifi in their lounges. Of course, you pay annually for the lounge membership.