[ILUG] Re: Broadband providers

[Brian Foster]

  | From: Timothy Murphy <tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie>
  | Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:33:34 +0100
  | 
  | On Mon 13 Aug 2007, Lisa Muir wrote:
  |[ ... ]
  | > > In my experience, it is possible to speak to a normal human being at
  | > > eircom who is (a) in this continent, and
  | > > (b) can settle any problems with Eircom easily
  | > > (as eircom-eircom communication is quite good).
  | >
  | > You obviously don't have to ring them as much as I do then. Lucky you.
  | > I find the reality quite different, and I would strongly urge everyone
  | > to get their broadband from a different provider from their line
  | > landlord, and for extra insurance your voice carrier.
  | 
  | Your experience is sad, but your advice is very foolish, IMHO.
  | Most of the very serious problems with broadband
  | seem to arise from communication - or rather, lack of communication -
  | between ISP and landline owner, if these are different.
  | 
  | If the probability of communicating rationally with one telecom is epsilon,
  | the probability of a rational conversation involving two telecoms
  | is epsilon^2.

 eh?

 in the mono-supplier companyA situation,
 support person Sa (contacted by the client)
 has to talk to engineer Ea:

    client ↔ Sa ↔ Ea.

 the intra-companyA Sa ↔ Ea channel (which may
 be more involved than that) is, presumably,
 where epsilon applies.

 and similarly for mono-supplier company B:

    client ↔ Sb ↔ Eb.

 in the different supplier situation it'd be
 something like:

    client ↔ Sa ←...→ Eb.

 the question is what is the inter-companyA↔B
 channel ‘←...→’?  who is involved?  and how
 many steps?  the chain could be, for instance:

    client ↔ Sa ↔ Ea ↔ Sb ↔ Eb.

 leading to epsilon² but that's clearly not
 the only possibility.  (nor do I consider
 it even a likely one.)  I suspect a more
 probable chain is not unlike:

    client ↔ Sa ↔ Ea ↔ Eb.

 that is, there is an engineer-to-engineer
 backchannel, so once you can get through
 to that “engineering network” things can
 go much more smoothly.

 or in short, it does not follow that ‘←...→’
 necessarily leads to epsilon².

 the above assumes the client only has to make
 one call.  in the far-too-common case of buck
 passing (each company blames the other), then
 there are multiple calls by the client (at
 least one to each company), which very easily
 winds up being far worse than epsilon².

cheers!
	-blf-
-- 
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