No Internet for me

/rant

I feel a little like I've insulted the Soup Nazi, only with my home Internet provider. A short time ago, Hutchinson had a little ice storm. Not as bad as the one 7-8 years ago when the ice knocked out power to the library for 3 days, but serious enough to litter the street and sidewalks with tree limbs both large and small. While I never lost power at home, we did lose our cable Internet connection from Cox Communications. And that was when the fun started!

Joking. It wasn't fun. In fact, it was a lot of talking to a series of seemingly well-intentioned customer service reps who had no ability to do anything but empathize. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% sure that these folks would have helped me if they could, they just had no way to do it.

Here are the stories:

First contact the Sunday we lost service: Explain that my cable is out, and the tech support person confirms this. I'm watching, literally, limbs break and fall out of trees while on the phone and yet according to Cox there has been no "outage" declared for my area. Apparently an "outage" must be declared or you get shoved to the bottom of the service call pile. Nothing can be done until a WEEK from Tuesday. Nine days for a service call. What? Are all the repairmen on vacation? Tech support was polite and efficient, but could DO nothing.

Second contact in person at the store: Explain situation and ask if it is really possible that no one is available for 9 days to restore my service. Answer: yes, that is true BUT there is no widespread outage in the area. No reason given for the apparent lack of repair crews.

Third contact mid-week: Tech support person on telephone explains that our area is being "upgraded" to fiber (no explanation available for what that means). No technicians are available to hook customers back up until project is done. So, a weather event occurs that knocks out power to thousands, but the cable company doesn't want to interrupt an upgrade project to get service back to its customers?

Here's what this all says to me: There is no connection between the Cox decision-makers and the Cox customer. There is in place a "screen" of tech support and CSR staff who, intended or not, insulate the decision makers from problems. And there seems to be no way for the folks who are part of the "screen" layer to solve problems for their customers. Were there a choice, I would have already cancelled my Cox subscription.

But, what happens when one large company has, essentially, a stranglehold on a particular service or product? Truthfully, I have two choices for residential Internet service in my town - AT&T or Cox. At the speed level I subscribe to from Cox, AT&T has an advertised download rate 1/4th the speed for about the same price. So, not really any competition. IMO, there is no competition for high speed Internet in my town.

What is the solution? I think two things that lobbying and big corporate dollars will never allow. First, treating Internet service as a utility on the federal level. Second, on the state and local level, encouraging municipal broadband networks.

/end rant