|
What's the best way to invite government regulation of largely unregulated businesses? That's easy: do a poor job offering a product or service.
The wireless industry has found that out the hard way. Is it going to be the broadband access industry's turn next?
As our cover story by Evan Blackwell points out, there are growing instances where disgruntled customers--be they ISPs, small businesses or retail customers--are organizing via Web site, meeting group and lawsuit to make their complaints heard about poor service, misleading advertising, discriminatory pricing ... whatever it is they think they want from broadband service providers and are not getting. Cable operators have had the pleasure of message boards griping about problems with @Home and Road Runner for several years, now it's DSL's turn.
Even if one assumes that the complainers are a vocal minority of disgruntled Web surfers and mom-and-pop ISPs, the risk from their calls for legal redress or a regulatory clampdown becomes more real as mainstream broadband service becomes more pervasive, and politicians start listening.
Whether service is as universally bad as it's being portrayed may not be the point. I recently attended a gathering of cable industry folk and heard one respected executive talk about how it took 11 truck rolls to get his DSL service ironed out.
Hard to believe? Of course it is. But in the eyes of the people most likely to glom onto a call for greater oversight or regulation of broadband services, such anecdotal evidence becomes a powerful tool.
Look at what's happened with wireless. I agree with wireless industry critics that the service frequently is poor: dropped calls, coverage holes, blocked calls, problems made more egregious by the widespread use of wireless phones and by the industry hype surrounding digital wireless services that were supposed to curb such problems.
But it's more than a little disturbing to see that there's legislation being re-introduced in Congress during the coming weeks that would require the FCC to collect consumer complaints about wireless service.
News media already are jumping on the bandwagon, much in the way they did with the issue of whether people should be barred from wireless phones while driving. The result there? A variety of state and local legislative initiatives to bar phone use while driving, despite a lack of scientific evidence that a.) It causes widespread problems, and b.) Legal remedies will do more good than harm.
What does that mean for broadband service providers? It certainly doesn't bode well for the new competitive crowd, which already is pressed by financial troubles and likely is responsible for its fair share of poor service. And, their strong growth numbers to the contrary, the big boys might want to start paying attention as well, given that bad publicity tends to have a spillover effect that stains everyone equally.
Afterthought: Look for two new features on www.broadbandweek.com, as this week we begin featuring letters you've written to us and People items about promotions, job changes, and so on. The Letters and People links will be in the toolbar on the left side of the home page. You can send items for these features to us at broadbandweek@cahners.com.
|
