From bad to worse for FairPoint in Vermont

Vermont gets what it deserves

Verizon doesn't want YOU back.

Wark should quit and volunteer to do something useful such as pick up trash along Vermont's roads.

Anon, I concede to your first point of not implying this most recent outage being the comparison. However, I maintain that even at its reported worst, the outages here do not compare (not even close) with telecom outages in third world countries. There is no "might" to it...

I've seen entire countries (Greece, Kuwait, Sudan, India to name a few) go completely dark in telecom service for as much as a month, while I sitting in my hotel room, have had to go about my business. My experience is within the last 15 years, and so, recent by comparison.

Customer service, in most third world countries, is completely non-existent. Even when I lived in Germany (far from the third world), during the early years of Deutsche Telekom's take-over from Deutsche Bundespost, you could not navigate through the myriad of operators to find anyone who could service your bill. You had to visit an office that could be an hour away, and wait to see a director (never allowed to see a lowly rep).

Perception here is the problem. People who compare their pain to someone else's (e.g. Third World) should experience the Third World trouble first... There is no comparison here, which makes this report quite embellished.

You apparently did not read the story well enough, what was said was:

"FairPoint Communications, which already can be accused of offering customers in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine communications services Third World users might find subpar"

The writer did not imply that the most recent outage was akin to that of service in Third World Countries, what he did say was that so far the service that Fairpoint has brought to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont since January has been dismal and Third World users MIGHT find that service sub par.

Myself being a Fairpoint customer can attest to their horrible service, as well as their non-existent customer service. I would love to have Verizon back - heck I would even pay more just to have Verizon back.

Anyone who would irrationalize a comment the likes of which compares Fairpoint's service to that of a Third World country has obviously never experienced such a Third World country's telecom services. I've personally lived in several third world countries, and you have no idea...

12,000 people lose internet service for 8 hours. That is less outage than 1% of all served, as I understand it from new releases on the number of subscribers. 1% outage?

Your yellow journalism approach is a shame to your industry. AT&T has a 1% outage of cell phone providers last month, and no one reported it. I would assume 1% of AT&T customers comes to a much larger number... 1% of Qwest users do not get services provided for more than 60 days after ordering (a standard they've personally reported for years) and no news service picks it up...

Yellow journalist, Jim O'Neill, today reports that less than 1% of those served constitutes worse service than most Third World users are accustomed to, and has the gall to put it into print. Amazing...