The unthinkable happened recently: I bought a new house, and Time Warner Cable wasn't available as an internet selection. This left me with only one option: AT&T. I had previous DSL service back in the early days with a little company called "Embarq", and couldn't wait to leave them. At that time, there was a contract, and I was bound to it for 2 years. I promised myself that I would avoid internet access provided by phone companies from then on.
However, I was against a wall on this one, and was pretty much forced to use AT&T. So, I called the local AT&T store. There was some good news: Contracts had been eliminated altogether. I was able to sign up with relatively little information. It was done in a quick manner, so no issues there.
Afterwards, they came out The Many Uses Of The Versatile Digital Camera Memory Card to install it. This is where the first problem began. AT&T was supposed to leave all my line information posted on the front door, along with the passwords. No dice.
I connected my modem without a problem, and all the lights lit up, except for the one that said "Internet". Oh no, that one was as red as they get. So, I inserted the install disc, praying it would help me. It did not.
Here is where the real fun begins. The disc required "Windows" to run, or the latest and greatest version of "OS X" for the Mac. Now, I don't have either. I one of the exponentially growing minority of people that runs linux. I figured I could get around this pretty easily. Then, it said I needed Internet Explorer. Again, not a problem. I could run IE under emulation.
So, I ran IE, and got stuck. Why? Because Microsoft wanted to run 3 or 4 "Active X" scripts on my computer. Fine. This was great. So, I broke apart the file Tips to Choose a Corporate Entertainer folders, only to find out that most of this install program was in Adobe Flash along with a few HTML pages that it wanted to call along the way. This really made me mad, because all these folks had to do was write the installer completely in Flash to begin with. It's cross-platform, and would have allowed people to get access to their service immediately.
Hey, I can understand them not supporting Linux. It's frustrating, but it's also something you learn to live with. The next portion of my story is inexcusable. I called my brother up, as he has a Vista laptop. I'd just run through the activation and registration through his computer. I'm sure you can sense what is about to happen.
Even though Vista was listed as one of the supporting operating systems, I still couldn't get the disc to run. So, being a reasonably technical guy, I decided to see if it needed to be run as "Administrator". Nope. What if run it in 2000, NT, or XP compatibility modes. It tells me I am running an unsupported operating system. You just can't win for losing These Birkenstock Styles Are Definitely Not Granola with this process.
Finally, I gave up. I called AT&T, and told them up front that I wanted to activate service online. This meant I had to go through a preemptive strike and tell them all the processes I waded through to let them know I wasn't stupid or technically inept in any sort of way.
In their defense, I did talk to a very nice young lady who seemed amused with my predicament. It's a good thing she was nice, as I had to spend 30 minutes going over personal information, 4 security questions, and countless other inconveniences and annoyances to get my service activated. This was, of course, after completing the requisite hold time of 10 minutes or so. She stayed on the line long enough to make sure that I was able to access my AT&T DSL. Finally, I had service. I said goodbye to the nice lady, and proceeded to hook up my router.
Now, this entire process was a real pain for me, as I am an above average user. As a former Time Warner customer, this really irked me. You see, with them, all I had What Should Be Your Queries While Talking to the Sacramento Used Car Dealers to do was connect the modem, give them a call, and read the hardware(or MAC ) address to them. That was it. No passwords, nosy questions, or anything of the sort. One call, a 15 minute wait, and there's your internet. Plus, they had much higher speeds available.
AT&T made me go through a convoluted, Jurassic process to get access, along with software, programmed for proprietary operating systems that didn't even have the decency to work. Now, some of the blame falls on the hardware manufacturer, but guess who controls the network access? AT&T gave them the specs that the software was programmed to interface with. They are the ones who should take the lion's share of the blame on this one.
So what's the point... Well, AT&T (and phone companies in general) are not friendly to the vast majority of their users. It's one thing if someone with a bit of tech knowledge is setting things up. It's another thing entirely when your mom, dad or grandma is left to their own devices to set something like this up. People should be trying to simplify the process, rather than overly complicating things with intricate registration processes.
Until they do, the vast majority of people will stay with the cable company for their YouTube and email fix. I may very well switch myself, once it becomes available in my area. Now, I'm off to make my own DVR (or PVR, or whatever else they're calling the blessed things these days). I'll let you know if I have a better success with that.
Kurt Hartman is Head of Employee training Sciatica, Back Pain and Sleep - three Strategies For Relief From Back Pain and Sciatica Thus You Will Sleep for Mobile Fleet Service, Inc. He also routinely handles problems of a technical nature for them as well. They sell michelin tires for off road use as a regular practice. You can head over to http://www.buybigtires.com if you would like to read more of Kurt's writing. His advice: Keep the cable internet, unless you have ComCast. Otherwise, drop it like a hot potato.
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