<i>&gt;AT&amp;T promises (whatever that's worth) 24 hour customer support. I am</i>
<i>&gt;also pretty sure that there will be no busy signals using AT&amp;T's service,</i>
<i>&gt;knowing the size and capabilities of their network.</i>
<i>&gt;Other than wanting to support my local ISP, I can't see how AT&amp;T could</i>
<i>&gt;offer anything *worse*. If they offer true customer support, they will</i>
<i>&gt;certainly be better than 98% of the ISPs that are out there.</i>
This same issue is rumbling in Australia, just that the potential player is
Telstra - the govt owned telephone company.
The way I see it, Telstra doesn't sell mobile phone services directly, i.e.
it relies on resellers significantly. What's the situation like in the US?
My point has been if they *have* to rely on resellers for mobile phone
services which is a simpler commodity compared to the suite of services ISPs
provide, I cannot see Telstra doing it. Now some senior executives, in the
fad of the times may push Telstra/AT&amp;T into retailing Internet services -
but it is a whole different ball game to phone/mobile phone services. The
essence of Internet services is customer service to enable the customer to
overcome the hassles of using all kinds of computer configurations to access
all kinds of Internet services on the net.
It will not be easy for AT&amp;T or Telstra to train overnight the staff needed
to resolve "com port/IRQ conflicts" and "my password doesn't work" etc etc
problems. There is a much much broader range of customer "problems"
providing ISP services than there is in providing phone services.
Phone services are infrastructure intensive. ISPs are knowledge intensive.
Much of the complaints against ISPs in the US aren't going to be resolved by
a switch to AT&amp;T. The complaints will get worse. I mean where is AT&amp;T going
to get the PC,Win 95, Browser X, "oops-I-left-the-caps-key-on?" expertise
overnight? Much of the complaints against ISPs are because of a mismatch of
expectations - customers think of phones and expect Internet to be nearly as
easy. Many of the smaller ISPs are manned by
"computer-nerd-turned-customer-service-rep". Not an easy marriage for the
customer, but not as bad as one with a cute voice answering "comport-irq
conflict-what's-that?"
I think AT&amp;T will realise this mistake down the road and resolve it by
buying up the knowledge through buying smaller ISPs or having latter as
"resellers".
Bala Pillai bala@apic.net
Moderator, Asian Internet Marketing
<a href="<a href="http://www.aim.apic.net/">http://www.aim.apic.net/</a>">http://www.aim.apic.net/</a>
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