sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Telecom Service & Providers Verizon vs US LEC

Excuse me for jumping in folks,
THANKS ED!!! THAT WAS HILIARIOUS!!!!
Excuse me while I continue laughing at your above phone company "diversion tactic."

(...I don't get many oportunities to laugh...why?
Because Verizon currently handles all of our long-distance trunks)

Thanks again!!

Mike, you must be in the Durham-RTP area. You are actually dealing with the better half (GTE) of the Verizon marriage. Come on up in here to our hood and see how bad it really can be.

Ed,
Do you get a lot of subcontractors with VZ identification showing up down there?

More often than not, I get someone who actually works for some contracted company rather than an actual VZ employee.

As for the names, there are some companies here that don't even have websites, though they provide data circuits...
I know of one off of the top of my head that has a name so silly it defies reason, but they're making money hand over fist.

No, I can't say that I have encountered any Verizon subs lately. I saw some about five years ago who were running inside wiring, but that's about it.

US SLACK A.K.A USLEC.....Don't get me started!

You're right Ed,
Our LD circuits all go thru Durham-RTP.
I'll count my blessings. Overall, the circuits stay pretty clean. It's just that when I really need to work with those folks, it takes so long just to find the person I really need to be working with, and moments right before they connect me to the correct person, the trouble mysteriously disappears...hmm. It's amazing!!

Well this really doesn't fill me with optimism. I have been through the ringer with Verizon. After spending an afternoon some time back with the area cable manager - after having gone through the "customer advocacy" group - I've pretty much thrown my hands in the air. We've had terrible cable problems in our headquarters office, but forget about Verizon actually fixing the cable problems. They'd rather send a tech out every week to swap pairs.

I think the final straw was my last Verizon install. Got to Chantilly, VA (from Southern Maryland mind you - Ed, you'll know what kind of commute I'm talking about here) at 9:00 AM only to have the Verizon tech show up at 5:15 PM. Of course there was a provisioning "issue" so no dial tone that night.

I figure at the very least I'll have some new company to yell at. I'm going to talk to a Qwest engineer about their IA circuits after the holidays. We've used Qwest for our data network for almost 3 years now and they've been pretty good. And at least my Qwest rep was kind enough to drop off a Christmas card and a tin of cookies :-).

You know, Steve, Cox Communications is really active in Fairfax County now for voice and there is NO Verizon involvement. In the few installations we have worked with them on, the transitions have gone without a hitch.

Since they are the cable TV company (and their headquarters are in Chantilly), they maintain their own separate fiber facilities. Several of their top people that I know of came from other CLECs. From my dealings with them, these guys are the cream of the crop. You might want to consider a proposal from them. They have just taken two of our larger customers away from Cavalier Telephone.

I have no loyalty to any service providers, I just speak from my experiences with them. As I said earlier, I have had minimal problems with US LEC and XO, but it just seems that Cox offers something different; the elimination of Verizon from the loop.

Ouch.......SoMD to Chantilly........You couldn't catch a flight from BWI to Dulles? It might have taken less time than driving!

Thanks for the heads-up, Ed. I've really been struggling with how to proceed on this one. We do most all of our long-distance with Qwest as well as our data. I do like the idea of consolidation, though having all of our services through one provider makes me a bit nervous. I will say that the customer support through Qwest has been pretty good.

What I'm not sure about is whether to have a LEC (or CLEC) provide dial tone to each site and then have a backend network for interoffice communications or to use one provider for both the local service and on-net stuff.

We have some smaller locations that I think would be perfect for integrated access circuits, but I suppose all site would have to be on IA circuits to facilitate calling between locations.

This is a little ways off anyway as I need to budget for the setup/equipment, etc. I am looking to make a change now, however, in my HQ as we are WAY over trunked. I just want to be sure that this decision is one that I can live with down the road.