If this is a problem in more than just my area, it sounds like its high
time for a class action lawsuit.
GTE is now (unsuccessfully but irratating as hell) trying to keep me
from testing my own lines, by making it near-impossible to call my own
lines (dump after a few minutes), and in the process of their
'testing', making it impossible for my users to stay logged in for more
than a few minutes at a time.
They also hung a padlock on their demark, I jumped into the
supervisor's stuff with both feet (professionally of course)... He
made one mistake.. and I quote:
"We cannot test those lines." MAJOR SCREWUP since I am demanding
test results from every line before the trouble ticket is cleared.
They brought out a fisher price box and tried to tell me that was line
testing equipment and I laughed at them, since it only tested at one
frequency, and performed a 300 - 3200 hz noise test (coming back at
'4.9'.... 4.9 WHAT?) but no signal strength test (my signal sucks
hard here)..
This is destroying my business, but word from the other side says no
one is able to connect to my competition (running v.everything USR
33.6k) at more than 4800 baud with their V.32 and v.34 modems.
I got my $1400 (woopie shit), but I got a $50,000 investment here just
in hardware, and not to mention tens of thousands of hours I have not
been paid for, because of GTE's quality. Also, they've blown two
modems by cutting the ground the day before anything was actually
done... the ground for my box was never attached, and the box itself
is on a wood home - no ground there.
Right now the line I send people IE3 on (the courier on my workstation)
is so low (22.5 db S/N or less) that I can't get new customers on, and
5 disks per customer is costing me a fortune, considering I already
made a $300 investment in my Courier..
If this is happening anywhere else, I'd like to hear. I'm going to go
lawyer shopping today and see what I can find...
Good luck guys - its a tough world.
JS