news.com.com — The growing competition is prompting changes in both the cable and phone industries. Verizon technicians who normally work outdoors splicing cables and the like are being trained to work on PCs so when they install high-speed data lines, they can fix associated problems on customers' computers, like viruses.
Aug 26, 2006 View in Crawl 4
god4twentyAug 26, 2006
First off - Verizon techs wouldn't be cable guys, they are the phone guys.Second - This is going to F up more systems than the geek squad.A poorly trained Phone tech is going to mess around with your virus infected system....that's a great idea. That's like hiring a chef to fix a blender. I predict after the tech thouroughly screws the customer's system they will say "I'm just the phone guy, sorry, your own your own. You might want to get someone to fix that.""
Closed AccountAug 26, 2006
i work for comcast, and we are trying some pilot program, where we have tech's that will work on computers with unspported problems, like spyware and stuff. Its still in the beta stage but costs $30 for a visit and it covers everything, i really disagree with this becuase we don't belong trying to compete with GeekSquad, its all about the $$ to evil corporations. So basically, we already have X of tech's that serve and area that we are already backed up on, and we are taking away tech's and making service calls further out for our problems to be fixed. Way to go comcast!
ajmsscAug 26, 2006
@god4twentyFirst off - Verizon has a FIOS serviceSecond - the article says the techs are being TRAINED. That means they will provide a professional service with all that is implied..