The Perfect Storm

(picture unrelated)

Over the past week or two I have gone through an interesting confluence of issues, all centered around communications.

1. My Comcast Triple Play is about to hit the one-year mark, which means that my rates are about to go way the hell up.

2. My company is deploying Cisco IP phones to all telecommuters. These phones require a VPN initiated at the router, so each of us was issued a Cisco 851 or the wireless equivalent.

3. Verizon is trying for a third time to finish pulling down their fibers so every unit in this building is finally ready for FIOS.

4. I just finished converting all of my home wiring to cat 6, and every device has access and is wired to Gigabit ethernet (not all can support it).

I had expected the Cisco router to be the biggest pain in the ass, but in reality it is a matter of education. I just don't know enough about it, and troubleshooting it takes time. What I had not expected was for my bailout from Comcast to Verizon to turn into a god damn comedy of horrors.

Yesterday, I decided that a company that treats its incoming customers as bad as Verizon does is not really a good way to spend my $150/month for telecommunications and cable TV. The solution is simple: cancel the order and move on.

The problem is that it is not just an issue of killing the order, I still need to deal with a rate increase from Comcast (who, by the way, have exceptional customer service for my area) which is going to leave me paying over $60/month for a VoIP service that is buggy and flaky. Also, *that* part of their customer support is not as good as for their TV and Internet sections.

My caller ID and voicemail work on and off, and opening tickets doesn't help much. I don't think I have lost the voice line once in the past year, but all of those ancillary services have been average at their best, and the web interface is just terrible.

Since I'll have a company issued phone, the VoIP line now reverts to personal use. I decided to switch it to Vonage, only to find out they are not able to transfer my number. No big loss there, I am sure that less than 15 people have that phone number so it should be easy to send them the new number. Vonage is $25/month (actually $30 after you add all of the regulatory taxes) for more features than Comcast's VoIP product, which in two weeks or so is going to cost me more than $60.

Even if my TV and Internet rates go a bit up, I'll still end up paying less by using Vonage.

The first thing that impressed me about the Vonage setup is that it allows for an automatic failover number. If your network goes down, it forwards your calls to whatever number you specify. This is a pretty sweet feature, assuming it actually works. The rest of the web management area is clear and uncluttered, and it is clear of eye candy, unlike Comcast's which looks like they spent more time making it pretty than making it useful.

Another thing I noticed is that some enterprising MBA type figured out a way to blend-in feature up-selling without making it intrusive. Some features are optional, but they are not shoved in your face, instead they are simply listed on the side or clearly marked as optional and available at an additional cost.

If Comcast's only competition is Verizon, and they keep treating new customers the way they have treated me since March, FIOS is going to be a monumental flop. It doesn't do them a god damn thing to have a technically superior solution of the business is not capable of handling the business part properly. When Comcast basically redid their whole cable network in this county, it was transparent to us. One day they simply told us that they have finished to redo everything with fiber to the curb, then offered us digital cable and cable modems.

Zero disruption.

When HD came, it was a question of switching digital cable boxes, again, zero disruption.

When voice came, they simply brought in a voice capable Arris cable modem. It took them about an hour, but most of that time was spent with the tech on the phone to his dispatcher trying to check the phone line. They did not even take out my old cable modem until weeks later.

Is MagicJack the new Sunrocket?

For those of you that missed that mess, Sunrocket was a VoIP service that promised unlimited domestic and long distance calls in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico for $200/year or less, depending on the promotion. Sometimes you even got a $50 cordless phone just for signing up. The service was provided through a black box, you could either plug it into your home network router, or you could plug your broadband connection into it and use it as a one-port router. I was one of the lucky ones: the day I signed up I was given two years of full service for $200.

The service was great, but it did not seem to take advantage of QoS, so I had to make sure that I was not doing a big download before I reached for the phone to make a work call. Once the connection was using more than 200K or so, it did not really like it and started sounding noisy (one of the basic reasons why my current boss hated that line so much).

Sunrocket crashed and burned. I got about 14 months of service out of my $200, still an exceptional value. I did not want to try another of those outfits, so I simply upgraded my Comcast account to a triple play, which got me a new cable modem with built-in VoIP and proper QoS. It is still a bit noisy, but only when the connection is about to get saturated. What I don't like about the Comcast phone service is that their ancillary services are actually inferior to what I had with Sunrocket. Their voice mail management sucks, and the call history is not always available.

During one of my many insomniac episodes, I was channel surfing when I noticed that there was an infomercial for MagicJack. The beauty of the infomercial is that it was designed to sell the product without really explaining how it works, they just showed you to plug it into your PC, plug a phone into it and use it.

Pure genius.

The other thing is that the MagicJack is much smaller than the Sunrocket device, it is just a little box with an USB plug. People understand when you try to sell them a little box and very basic instructions.

You don't have to be a nerd, just take this box, plug it in, and you are done.

Now I am starting to see reports that they are actually making a killing selling the damn things. Broadband reports started a thread today about the subject, and you can see some more activity at Google News. The funny thing is how very few news outlets are questioning their momentum and if the company can actually make money. I guess we'll see.

I would have been tempted, but my employer just handed me a Cisco IP phone and a Cisco 851 router, so as long as that works without disrupting my home network it will probably leave the Comcast phone to be used for personal calls only.