Who is this I speak of? Verizon of course. The concern? Survival. Yes I know, Verizon is looked upon as one of the best run of the Telcos in the US if not the Planet. Well let me paint you a different picture –

• Verizon has a looming contract dispute due in August with both the CWA and IBEW.
• Worse, in the NE where where the stike may occur some brainy type in HR labor relations thought it would be a great idea to make the two contracts coterminous. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
• FairPoint, the recent buyer of a fair swath of Verizon NE territories has already settled with the union that represented the former VZ craft personnel. That sets a bar so to speak.
• RIF [Reduction in Force] notices are going out in fair numbers in the Telcom, Business and Wireless subsidiaries. Many have already received notification to be off the payroll 5/30. In some cases entire operations are being closed with the intent of shifting those functions East into a area that may go on strike? Keep in mind that August date.
• Though unconfirmed at this point there appears to be no board room — labor leader face to face talks at this time. Management is already doing cross training to cover craft positions if a strike occurs.
• Bartech a contracting firm has sent out qualifying letters to all former employees as to their availability to fill positions. Irony is when the first envelope went out it lacked the skillset codes to fill out the survey. Second letter was sent. Take rate is probably pretty low at this point.
• The Tampa region right now is in an uproar both at the craft level and the customer base on quality of service. That includes POTS and FIOS. Problem resolution in either system is protracted.

So if we tie this all together the company is going to flush staff right before a possible strike action. The company is preparing to close down west coast service centers moving them East into regions that will be affected by a possible strike. The contracting firm bungled the retiree survey. Company barely had enough staff to cover the last strike 3 years ago in the Mid-Atlantic region. Worse, craft has the skills to deploy FIOS in the NE not management. This is smart management? I am beginning to wonder.

Ultimately Verizon is going to have to sue for peace. The union holds all the cards this round. If the union has its way VZ Business will also be unionized.

Its one company with a labor issue. So What?

Well keep this in mind. Verizon just won the national ‘C’ 700mhz band. In about 3 months a clock starts ticking and its not the labor contract. Winners in the auction have 4 years to get to 40% service penetration and 7 years to get to 75% penetration. Now in my mind it would have been a far stretch for Verizon to have done so without a strike. Imagine the situation with a strike that lasts a year or so. Yeah I know, but Wireless won’t be on strike. True. But hey wireless is worthless without decent backhaul. Who is going to implement the circuits if craft isn’t there to implement it? Management? Do you really think that in an abnormal working environment such as a strike is a great way to start implementing a new technology? Were I the FCC and the strike goes more than 6 months I would be concerned that VZ could be in material default of their bid agreement.

In what has to be the lamest excuse for a security system, Sprint has it. I hope that their legal team has the $$ backing for a possible legal suit. But this is crazy –

I’m a former Sprint rep, I worked with this “3 questions” system numerous times.

I was shocked at the number of times I was able to access an account by simply guessing the answers. Fortunately I am an ethical person, but if I wasn’t I could’ve done a LOT of damage very easily.

In every question pertaining to cars, it was always three Luxury models plus one typical one (Peugeot, Porsche, Ferrari and Ford for example) which made them stupidly easy to guess.

In addition the “none of the above” answer for “which properties have you owned?” was correct 99% of the time.

On top of that, one thing the article does not mention is that you are only required to answer TWO of the three questions correctly to gain access to an account. The system won’t tell you which ones were right and wrong, but you need only answer TWO of three to get access.

This new process is more trouble than it’s worth if you ask me and I’d like to find the person who came up with it and give him a good punch to the head.

But don’t blame Sprint for all of this, some people truly don’t give a crap about the security on their accounts. When asking customers to setup a 6-digit pin number most just wanted to set it to 111111 or 123456. Pretty secure huh?

The Consumerist has had full coverage here and here. We recommend you read both articles.

Now if you are in the market for cellular deals we would recommend that you forego Sprint for the foreseeable future. Not that their services are bad, but you as a consumer cannot afford the risk of identity theft that the Sprint security system could open you up for. A cheap cell rate can never offset the damage that can be done to your credit history.

One word — Nomophobia. Yes friends a new word to add to the lexicon. Nomophobia is the fear of NOT being connected either by cell phone or some other form of wireless. The researchers that did the study say over 50% of the users may have the phobia. Take it with a grain of salt, but here it is –

Getting married, starting a job or going to the dentist have long been recognised as sources of great stress.

But it seems they are now matched by a new, peculiarly 21st century affliction - the fear of being out of mobile phone contact.

Millions apparently suffer from “no mobile phobia” which has been given the name nomophobia.

They have become so dependent on their mobile that discovering it is out of charge or simply misplacing it sends stress levels soaring.

Personally I believe them. I have several times seen people I know go blotto when the phone goes dead.

Linky.

Is it time for new a seed change in Telecom? A very big part of the bloated cost of providing service is rooted in the use of proprietary systems. With open source software running on off the shelf commodity hardware costs in terms of both acquisition and operation can be dramatically reduced.

The overarching vision for open-source telecom is to enable telecom economics that are more in-line with web economics. For web-based businesses, massive use of open-source software and COTS hardware has enabled advertising-supported business models that provide truly disruptive services to the end user: free email, free videos, free storage and processing power, and so on.

From these fundamental businesses, services proliferate and innovation gets turbo-charged. By contrast, today’s telecom vendors rely on business models that drive up end-user prices using inflexible, proprietary and expensive components to support lofty product margins. In the world of web economics built on open-source software, this model is destined to break.

Embracing open-source telecom starts with the core assumption that the telecom market is not inherently different than the numerous other markets served by open-source software. While proprietary telecom vendors have spent decades on software and have convinced some that their algorithms are more sophisticated and performance-sensitive that those of other markets, I question that theory. Linux — an entire operating system that runs a multitude of complex applications and algorithms and supports numerous devices — is open-source software. MySQL — a complex database behind countless web transactions — is open-source software. And these are just two examples in a sea of complex open-source software systems available today.

Are the proprietary vendors foolish enough to think that the market believes the software algorithms in telecom equipment are more complicated than an entire operating system or database system? As evidenced by examples such as Asterisk, Snort, and Quagga, if done correctly, open-source software can be built to handle the complex algorithms for telecom markets.

More on Will open source software and commodity hardware spark a telecom revolution?