`Have you noticed how resigned we have become to inadequacy and imperfection? We had achieved excellence in enough areas to know what it was we could expect.
"Consider, for example, the quality of domestic telephone service before the break-up of AT&T. But in recent years we've been backsliding into a level of defect-tolerance that's turning modern life into a version of Survivor." That was Mr Randall Rothenberg, editor of strategy+business website, writing recently about the US telephone system, once the best in the world.
His particular gripe was that he could not use his New York mobile telephone in Northern Virginia, home of the east coast tech industry, or between New York and Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the US's "power" corridors. In the country with the most advanced information and communications technology in the world, consumers are tearing their hair out over the standard of service in both mobile and fixed-line communications. Furious customers have created websites to vent their anger. Bellatlanticpathetic.com was set up by Mr Marcus Lewis, owner of a small tennis business, and details a horrendous experience with Verizon, formerly Bell Atlantic. It contains scores of other complaints from aggrieved customers about rudeness, overcharging, clueless employees, incompetent technicians, bills for services not received, bills for company repairs, crossed lines and emails arriving with empty packets. American telephones used to be a byword for reliability and good service. That was in the days of "Ma Bell", the country's biggest and richest company, founded 120 years ago by the pioneer of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.
After an antitrust settlement in 1984, its owner, AT&T, spun off local services to seven regional Bell companies, the so-called Baby Bells. Then came telecoms industry deregulation in 1996, with promises of better service and lower prices through increased competition. (AT&T's manufacturing arm, Lucent, with the famous Bell laboratories where the transistor was invented, was hived off at this time. After losing $4.2 billion in the last six months, it failed spectacularly last week to achieve a merger with Alcatel of France.)
Deregulation allowed AT&T to go back into the local telephone business, and permitted local telephone companies to enter the long-distance market, so long as they opened the market to new entrants. Prices did come down but many start-ups have since gone bankrupt and the old telephone companies have failed to cope with the complications of modern service.
Moreover local Baby Bells have been accused of seeing off rivals by charging high prices for use of their lines, thereby creating new, smaller monopolies all over the US. Baby Bells still control 93 per cent of the telephone business nationwide. Complaints about mobile telephone service mainly concern limitations of geographical coverage and bad customer relations. Mr Ken Hall, a sales manager of Indianapolis, tells how the mobile provider Voice Stream assured him his phone would work in Chicago and St Louis. When it didn't he cancelled his order but Voice Stream refused to return a $200 deposit until the Indianapolis Star took up his complaint.
Financial consultant Mr Dave Reuter tried to solve a problem with VoiceStream through email. In what he described as his "worst consumer experience in 42 years of life", he kept getting a Kafkaesque reply summarising his complaint and stating: "If we do not hear from you within 48 hours, we will assume your issue has been resolved." European visitors to New York who need a mobile phone urgently for business purposes quickly discover how frustrating and insular the US system can be.
I signed up at an In Touch Wireless store in Manhattan for a mobile with local and international dialling capacity using Voice Stream, the "fastest-growing provider of wireless communication services" in the US. VoiceStream demanded a $250 deposit which it keeps for a year.
Connection was promised in three working days. I pointed out that this would not be much use to a business executive on a short trip. The manager raised his eyes to heaven. "I have seen foreign businessmen weep with frustration," he said.
My local service did not come onstream until 15 days later. Attempts to make international calls brought a stern admonition from a recorded voice saying: "The service you are attempting to use is restricted or is unavailable." A VoiceStream person promised that I would get international calling capacity within 10 more days. That was January. I am still waiting. Six weeks ago I wrote to Mr John Stanton, chairman and chief executive of VoiceStream (business motto "to give more service than any other wireless provider") but have received no reply. Eventually, I got someone at customer service to tell me the VoiceStream system "is only for roaming within a certain small area. And only calls within the US". An Irish visitor to New York can use a European mobile if it has tri-band facility, but anyone in New York who wants to call the visitor, even from only a few blocks away, has to make an international call. And if that person is using a local mobile, forget it. Without tri-band facility a cell phone is useless. My Dublin-bought Nokia with Esat Digifone SIM card, which works all over Europe, in China, and in remote places like East Timor, does not pick up a signal in the Big Apple. Bad telephone service is not of course an exclusive prerogative of the US. It is available, no extra charge, on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Monday, I asked my fixed-line provider RCN - "the live wire of communications" - to get me international directory inquiries to ascertain a number in Dublin. RCN told me it did not have "operator transfer calls" and suggested I ring AT&T. AT&T put me through to a Spanish sales representative. Then I got a recording telling me to wait five minutes, but "if you prefer not to wait you are welcome to call back at another time" (ie get lost).
Eventually AT&T provided me with a toll-free number for Irish directory inquiries (1-800 562 6262). It rang. At last, old world service. A recorded male voice told me: "Your call is queued and will be dealt with in rotation." After two minutes waiting, the line went dead. I tried twice more, got the same result and gave up.
