Verizon Wireless Broadband is a fair-to-middling service, partly due to their flaky VZ Access Manager 3G modem interface. I often experience outages or signal drops that require me to disconnect and reconnect to restore functionality. One would think that if I weren't able to do anything online, I would be "disconnected". Not so. Verizon's software self-cripples (except during large downloads, like the vampire file i mention below), so that it is possible to have no connectivity while still being "connected".
But that's not my gripe here. My complaint is that they have a contract in which the customer is expected to keep track of and limit their internet usage, or else they will be charged overages. This wouldn't be a bad thing, except that their system is typically 24-48 hours behind on usage figures. That's right, you could have a virus that could be pounding Gigabytes of data up and down your pipeline, and Verizon will not let you know about it for up to 2 days. Yet you WILL be held responsible for that bandwidth, even though you had no access to the information required to limit it.
That's right. I was told that with a straight face by a Verizon Employee at the Customer Service desk. It was confirmed by several others on the phone, and later by my wallet.
I was disgusted that a communications giant like Verizon Wireless cannot get your data usage to you in a timely manner. Updates on the hour would be trivially easy to implement, with a minimal man-hour investment in writing the necessary code. Verizon subcontracts bandwidth from other providers, and this was used as an excuse for the ridiculously slow update times. However, as a former IT pro, I know that the information is available, and is simply being sat-on by lazy contractors who aren't motivated to push the data on an hourly basis. Verizon has been offering 3G internet for years, and should have had this issue straightened out by now.
And, certain websites seem to have vampire graphic files, that never stop loading. I have noticed this on Tiger Direct and a couple of other sites which i can't remember off the top of my head.
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