Last Friday night, Frontier took over Connecticut telephone service from AT&T.
Many customers were unsure what that would mean. They found out quickly.
Karl Decker — an avid “06880” reader, and former English instructor at Staples — lost internet service until 4:30 p.m. Saturday. He was not the only one.
From another phone — and after countless renditions of recorded “We are aware…thank you for your patience” messages – he managed to reach Frontier. A techie described what was happening as “all chaos.” He added, “thousands are offline.”
On Sunday, Karl was in Westport (Country Curtains had a 15%-off sale). The store still had no internet. Folks from Greenwich said they were still out too — along with everyone else they knew.
At noon on Monday, staffers at the Monroe Y noted that many friends remained without service.
“Is this news or what?” Karl asks. “When there’s an electric failure, it’s ll over the papers!”
Hear hear!
We are AT@T customers but only for our land line whose service was uninterrupted. My internet is served by another company. It must have been for Internet only.
We had a “bundling” plan from AT&T that covered cable as well. Last night, we couldn’t get TV reception for over an hour. It finally connected at about 9 pm.
I have AT&T for landline, cell phone, TV, and Internet. I had no interruption of service at all.
In fact, as soon as I got the letter in the mail about this change to Frontier, I phoned them and asked if anything would be interrupted. “I need the computer for my business.” Frontier assured me it was just a name change and that’s all. So what happened?
We have the Uverse bundle. Saturday morning no TV for over an hour. Internet painfully slow through Monday. Things seem back to normal for now knock on wood….”Frontier”??? Not a good name, suggests chaos doesn’t it?
As an AT&T customer from like, forever, we got our first email address in 1997 from the ‘worldnet.att.net’ server. Then the ‘worldnet’ part dropped off cutting the length of our email address, thankfully, in half. Then Yahoo! took over and all throughout, as with everything technical, it would glitch, sort of fix itself and continue on somehow…I love technology.
Now in the meantime, our email address, like our home and business addresses, became a major part of our identity. It was/is in hundreds, if not thousands, of address books around the world, was/is part of our business contracts, online subscriptions, letterhead and business cards. I coveted it as part of our identity and worked through the so-called glitches to keep it online.
Then it happened: a couple of weeks ago, a password was required to access the account and after providing same, none was allowed. Nada. “Crap.” I thought. “There it goes again.” I went through the all-too-familiar rigamarole to try to right it, but to no avail. Time passed. I started sending colleagues an alternate address, redirected fan mail and inquiries through my husband’s website and began the process of updating dozens of profiles, just to keep the machine moving.
Yesterday, my son and I tried one last time to see if we could get to the bottom of it and finally determined (after 32 minutes on hold) that when Frontier took over this territory of AT&T, it strangled our “@att.net” and left us on the vine to die.
So with a bit of meloncoly I have reconciled that after nearly 20 years of FelicianoEnterpises@att.net gone forever, you can now reach us at FelicianoEnteprisesInc@gmail.com….Google, don’t fail me now. I’ve just invested in new business cards!
Anybody else remember when telephone service was the most reliable thing in the world? Indestructible equipment that worked even in power outages, real people to talk to when you had a question. And then Uncle Sam said “monopoly” to Ma Bell and it all started falling apart. (I also remember the Princess Phone tho’ I don’t temember any encounters with dinosaurs.)
We were even told that the phone company — SNET in our case — paid for the light on those cute little phones. .. it wouldn’t be a charge on the electric bill they said.
I have internet, tv, land line (potts line), and cell service with ATT. I have had no interruption of service since the take over. Cell service (still ATT) still is horrible! I’m sure I’ve just jinxed myself.
Since Sunday we have experienced a scrambled picture, On Demand won’t work, and recorded shows won’t play. Not happy with Frontier.
I have a question: will Frontier elect to clean up the elegant and once beautiful ATT (nee SNET) building it now owns at 20 Myrtle Ave? The property is located at one of the gateways to downtown Westport and, at present, peeling paint, crumbling masonry, rusting iron, broken lamps and overgrown landscape greet all who pass by. This irresponsible and regrettable contribution to our streetscape could be distilled into a two word message for Westport: drop dead. Here’s hoping that Frontier, which is based in Stamford, takes to heart the big slogan that it splashed across a recent mailer: “We live here too”.
Had Cablevision for years for Internet and TV. This year we switched to AT&T U-Verse for Internet & TV because I have as never thrilled with Cablevision’so service. After roughly a week of slow internet and pixelated TV, guess what I did today? Yup. Switched back to Cablevision.