Much improved, phone service still fights gremlins
This is a tough crowd.
Despite apparent AT&T Inc. improvements to its SNET telecommunications operations in the past year, a new study shows, a slightly higher percentage of small businesses expressed dissatisfaction with the company”™s service.
It marks the Federal Communications Commission”™s first survey on the former operations of Southern New England Telephone (SNET) in Connecticut since AT&T Inc. gained control of the system in its 2005 merger with SBC Communications.
The FCC annually analyzes the technical performance of Bell-Heritage telephone companies. Because SNET”™s territory covers most of Connecticut save Greenwich ”“ where Verizon Communications Inc. is the historic carrier ”“ the FCC report is one gauge of telephone service for a large number of Connecticut business and residential subscribers.
Overall, the AT&T”™s access-line count in its SNET territory dropped 8 percent between 2005 and 2006 to 1.8 million lines.
“AT&T operates in a very competitive environment,” said Adam Cormier, a public-relations manager with Fleishman-Hillard Inc. who works at AT&T”™s New Haven office. “The decrease in access lines is a business reality that the company is fighting with new offers and services.”
Even as AT&T goes on a marketing offensive with services such as U-Verse TV and Voice, which both rely on Internet technology to poach subscribers to Cablevision, the FCC survey might indicate that it has not sufficiently covered its rear.
Between 8 percent and 9 percent of small-business customers expressed dissatisfaction with SNET”™s 2006 performance on installation, repairs and doing business; and some 12 percent of large companies carped on the latter front.
“Small survey results can be misleading as it is a snapshot in time,” Cormier said. “In 2006 AT&T was integrating new systems from the merger in order to provide a better customer experience.
Today the small business story is impressive. AT&T services all of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of other companies of all sizes. The products and services that the largest of companies depend on for business from AT&T are increasingly available to the small business.”
Undisputed is SNET”™s track record for improvements this decade. In 2001, SNET trailed only Chicago-based Ameritech in generating the most complaints in the nation; since then SNET and Ameritech have among the best records on that front. The company registered just 7 complaints per one million business lines, easily besting Verizon”™s figure of 33 complaints per million lines in its northern operations.
AT&T SNET did have a significant increase in percentage of switches with downtime, which rose from 1 percent in 2005 to 9 percent in 2006, or 15 of its 167 switches in service that year. Outages lasted about a minute each on average ”“ in just two occurrences was a switch down for an extended period of time, and in both instances procedural errors by other vendors were the culprit. Those outages averaged 81 minutes each, affecting an average of 7,000 customers.
Still, it was a far better performance than in 2001, when 42 percent of SNET switches experienced downtime, the worst performance in the nation.
Cormier said he was unable to obtain details on the two extended outages referenced by the FCC for 2006.
AT&T numbers among the largest employers in Connecticut with 7,500 workers. The company announced last month it would close call centers in Hartford and Meriden, eliminating 215 Connecticut jobs.
Founded in January 1878, SNET”™s predecessor company in New Haven pioneered several innovations, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut. They include operating the world”™s first commercial exchange and toll line; printing the first telephone book; and installing the first telephone booth.