Rant alert....

Verizon has been undergoing some large transformations as of late. Much of it is due to the decline of their wireline business.

The old New England Telephone corporate office building on Franklin Street in Boston has been sold and much of the work that was done there has been sent to other states like New York City and Virginia.

The company has lost a lot of workers. Some through layoffs and others through buyouts. The loss of workers has left the company with a large backlog of work (at least on the Enterprise side).

The company I work for (a CLEC) has been trying to groom DS3 circuits to reduce our CoA (Cost of Access). For the past year or so, Verizon has repeatedly dropped the ball. Their techs do NOT show up as promised or they make last minute cancellations so technicians....like me....are not made aware. We show up as scheduled around midnight, open a conference bridge and sit there....waiting for Verizon to join the bridge...only to find out that Verizon sent an after hours Email to our company canceling the night's work.

Up until about 2 years ago, the horror stories about dealing with Verizon in other parts of the country (New York Telephone & Bell Atlantic) were not seen by me. The New England Telephone workers were pretty easy to work with.

Sadly that is no longer the case.

Verizon has moved the New England "Carrier Access Trouble Center" (CATC) from Boston down to somewhere in Virginia.

When the CATC was located in Boston, wait times were fairly short. Yesterday I waited in the CATC queue for over 90 minutes trying to open a trouble report on some trunks that were blocked in the Verizon Harrison Ave Central Office in Boston. By the time 90 minutes rolled around I hung up in sheer frustration.

I think Verizon's decision to sell their networks in the states of Maine, New Hampshire & Vermont to Fairpoint Communications was part of this decision to shrink the company almost to the point where you'd think that they no longer want to operate as a LEC.

Because of the reduction in work force, Verizon has been forced to plead for patience while it tries to figure out how to clear the logjam of backorders.

The problem is....many of us are either fast running out of (or completely lost) patience with the current incarnation of Verizon.

Sorry about the detour. If needed, it can be moved or made into a brand new topic of some sort.

I Love FEATURE 00