By PLS
Thank you for respecting the Fourth Amendment, Qwest. The one against unreasonable searches and seizures. The one that NSA has massively abused at the behest of the constitutionally tone deaf Bush administration. The one that should prevent the compliant NSA director from being confirmed as the head of the CIA, which should (duh!) be independent of executive interference in the collection and analysis of intelligence.
I’m often annoyed with Qwest, my local phone company. Its marketeers keep offering bundles of add-on services not life-enhancing enough for me to want to pay for them. Supposedly I’ll be getting more for less. In fact, I’ll just be paying more.
It’s like this: All I want from Qwest is a reliable way to talk to people I want to talk to—and super high speed internet connectivity—but that’s not enough for Qwest or any other communications company, evidently.
Yes, I understand the business world’s imperative to improve the bottom line by ingeniously inveigling me into believing that more and more peripherical communications goodies are essential. I even sympathize. Theoretically. Which means I don't intend to play along where my own budget is concerned.
So I’ve been trying to figure out how to dump Qwest. Recently, in fact, I thought I’d hit on an exit strategy. For a while I felt very clever. Briefly put, I’d drop Qwest, I’d acquire the cell phone service* my friends have been haranguing me to get, and then I’d bundle everything else with a satellite service that promises more connectivity for less than I pay my present satellite company for just one TV outlet. Ergo: more for less.
Then a big fat fly got stuck in the ointment. My house has an alarm system that requires a land line. I can’t get rid of Qwest without rewiring the house to enable some sort of sophisticated wireless system which may, or may not, work.
So I went from feeling clever to feeling stuck again.
I want an efficiently integrated, easily upgradable complex of fast, reliable, high quality, essential services: home-and-away phone, tv, internet connectivity. The “system” I’ve got is increasingly complex, too expensive and more prone to error than the ideal would be. Competition isn’t making my life easier and cheaper.
But it’s not only the cost that bugs me. I have to waste too much time on management, on electronic housekeeping, on keeping up with new developments and assessing what makes sense and what’s a frill. It's like trying to shop for toothpaste, which gets more and more complicated. Who cares about all the supposed refinements and flavors? What counts is routine brushing and flossing, with anything. Maybe we should go back to the public service method of supplying what used to be called public utilities. I might have to pay more. But I’d save time. Up to a point, that would be an acceptable trade off. Time counts hugely for me and proabably for many other people as well.
Meanwhile, Qwest has done something admirable, something praiseworthy, something that may gain my loyalty after all. Unlike AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, Qwest refused to cooperate with the NSA request to supply its customers’ phone records for a mammoth data mining project that the President says, in his usual words-mean-what-I-mean-them-to-say-but-I-won't-tell-you-what-that-is way, isn't data mining but, even if it is, it will protect us from Al Qaeda and the Osama bin Laden he didn’t bother to capture because he really wanted to invade Iraq. Etc.
Anyone who refuses to roll over for this Constitution-bashing White House is ok with me. So I guess I’ll stick with Qwest.
For awhile.
*Note: It’s a matter of principle. I’m waiting for a cell phone company to offer a service tailored to singles who can happily walk down a street without chattering into a clam shell or razor. Why should I pay as much as people on family plans who needs hundreds, even thousands of hours of talking time? Give me national scope and fifty hours a month and I'll be yours!