hi there,
Just a general high-level question about Centurylink/Level3 post-merger, how is your overall experience with CenturyLink? if you could be sitting with the CEO of the company what is one thing you would ask him to fix?
please keep it high level and general. i intend to pass these to him and his team in an upcoming meeting.
Mehmet
Adding couple of 10G ports in EU has taken 4 months … still waiting. Can start to imagine how support can be …
As telcos grow bigger with M&As they become slower. How can telcos sustain / install agility as they grow ? Could be interesting study on telco corp culture …
Danny
In recent years at least i can not remember a single telco m&a which has resulted with better service and product. The question is how fast they can go back to the level of service they were providing prior, because during mergers lots of talent walk away, and often misalignments happen burning people out(depending who is buying who)
Well, IP Transit pricing isn't what it used to be either, so that will
have some kind of impact on how much more your get besides the x-connect
and a BGP session.
Mark.
Almost every M&A has been worse. The bulk of the times it hasn’t been worse is when the alternative was liquidation.
Mehmet,
Speaking strictly on their voice product, service has gone a bit downhill since the merger.
We never had problems with Level3 before the merger.
After Centurylink took over we started experiencing problems.
Just a couple of examples:
We waited months just to turn up a simple PRI. The PRI was sent back to design several times and then when it finally was turned up it isn’t working properly. The CL techs who were formally L3 express nothing but frustration with dealing with CL following the merger. Complaints to the account manager are met with just apologies and delays.
International call routing has become unreliable. In the last month alone we have had to create several service requests related to call failures. The result after anywhere from a couple hours to a day is just hey we rerouted try again. Then it works for a couple days and back to call failures and intercept messages.
I’ve already been asked if we should drop CenturyLink as the carrier and go back to using someone like AT&T.
Never had any of these issue when it was Level3.
Regards,
It’s taking over a year to get waves turned up in EU. I’m currently willing to wager on what comes up first, them or amazon peering (that’s taking just as long). After the merger, we have seen Level3 slide into the CL abyss becoming a pain to deal with. Pricing and ordering has been outsourced we’ve been told and decisions are no longer at a regional level. Frustrating at best.
Anything more than a week for things not requiring last mile construction is ridiculous.
For voice there are so many IP options I don’t know why anyone even messes with the old school carriers. About 4 years ago we signed up for L3 VoIP. We sent calls to France and the callerID didn’t make it. We opened a ticket we were told callerID wasn’t guaranteed on international calls. That was the day we canceled our service and asked for a refund. I am sometimes amazed how some of these carriers still have customers signing up.
It’s amazing how inconsistent the PSTN is.
If the FCC has their way the only place you will see the PSTN in history books. I can only hope that the same happens to faxing.
I'm told that the one of the only reasons faxing is still a thing is because of HIPAA-compliance.
Is it still HIPAA compliant when my cellphone receives faxes from doctors and pharmacies?
Apparently it's too hard to verify phone numbers and use the correct area code before faxing sensitive information.
I have heard similar. In reality we have two groups here who insist on keeping that capability, Medical and Finance.
We have been trying to get out of supporting faxing for a while 
This email has been classified as: General Use by Brower, Larry on Thursday, June 6, 2019
Greetings,
I have to admit that I was hoping to be able to report to this list that
CL was able to spin up a new 1G in fairly short order (after all, this
is what they assured me of when discussing it with them...) but it's now
been over a month, with them telling me it'll be another couple weeks
because they need to send a tech out (the wiring and all of the
equipment has been ready to go, though that also took longer than it
should have imv...).
And this in an already lit building in northern Virginia, not some back
of the woods location, small town, or something going across an ocean.
Pretty disappointing.
Thanks,
Just out of curiosity, what network are they bringing you up on?
Greetings,
This looks to be former Qwest, from what I've been able to tell. IPs we
were assigned were out of AS209.
Thanks,
Stephen
We tried to order a 100G circuit from them terminating in an existing Level3 FPP at a location that we've had at least two 1G circuits and a 10G circuit terminated at.
They refused to process the order because they needed to "extend the demarc " to our suite. There is no suite. It's a FPP in the basement of the building. Our FPP is next to it. We've done this before...
They said that the equipment (the FPP) may not be 100G compatible, and they may need to install a new one that can support 100G.
We told them to just forget it and we'd order from Zayo... <sigh>...
Sometimes you’d be surprised, it may not be straightforward on their end.
Remember, most people here are likely experts at some part or many parts,
what we do is likely wizardry to others.
I have a saying you’re welcome to steal if you don’t steal it too much:
“We are moving at the speed the organization is capable”. I suspect that’s
the case for them in a post-acquisition world trying to sort through all the
integration work.
- Jared
Greetings,
My personal experience, take it for what it is worth.
Level 3 was extremely slow to turn up a circuit well before the merger and seems slower post the merger. I have just never seen level 3 turn up anything fast, even in a data center they already were serving other customers in.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Hathaway
Information Technology • Howard Center Inc.