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I'm not going to defend CenturyLink, but in the interest of attributing this mistake to incompetence rather than malice, I'd like to suggest how this might have
by hathawsh 8y ago
I'm not going to defend CenturyLink, but in the interest of attributing this mistake to incompetence rather than malice, I'd like to suggest how this might have happened. CenturyLink is a multi-state ISP and their generic system has limited ability to support state-specific policies. They have a well-developed system for creating state-specific packet processing rules, but they don't have a well-developed way to notify all customers in a state.
Therefore, when Utah surprised CenturyLink with a new law, they didn't have a way to comply with the law quickly except by changing their packet processing rules. This was the ugly result.
CenturyLink should obviously have some way to add state-specific notifications to customers' bills. I hope they learn that lesson from this ridiculous event.
- techsupporter 8y agoWould it be too difficult to select all service addresses where state is equal to "UT" and then send a bulk rate piece of paper to each of them with these same words? On my CenturyLink bill in Washington State, I get state- and city-specific notices every month, but even if that's not easily changed, a piece of paper in the mail would have sufficed quite nicely with no packet blocking required at all.
- al2o3cr 8y ago> CenturyLink should obviously have some way to add state-specific notifications to customers' bills. If only there was some relevant piece of data, already required to ensure the bill reaches it's destination, that could help them determine which customers are in which states. They know billing addresses, and service addresses. They just didn't care.
- beatgammit 8y agoI think it was that this was cheaper and easier to implement, so they didn't bother doing the better option.