Mircea Baldean

Michael Dell: Today there are about 1bn people attached to the Internet. Everyday, about 500,000 new ones come on the Internet for the very first time in their lives. So that means, the Internet population in 3-4 years is roughly gonna double. About 85% of the growth comes from emerging countries.

I’m close to finalizing reading the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman. Awesome book by the way! A good part of it touches upon outsourcing jobs to India, especially call centre jobs.

So, here’s my story: Bell Sympatico DSL users have been experiencing major service disruptions in the Toronto area over the past few days. This affects me as well, living in Richmond Hill, always hitting a Toronto server and an IP address that had a reverse name as “basXX-torontoXX.dsl.bell.ca”.

I pick up the phone to call Bell and ask them “How much longer?” An extremely polite Dominique answers my call. “Sir, before we go any further, just in case we get disconnected, is there a number I can call you back?”

Uh, ah, I thought I was talking to Bell - the phone company. Why should I get disconnected?? Because the ‘net is not working for me?

So my question to the Rep was “Do you mind if I ask where are you located?”

“No sir, in Southern part of India”. Ahaa, just as Friedman’s stories from the book I’ve mentioned above.

After convincing the person at the other end (of the world) that my modem was actually powered on - I get a new challenge.
“Sir, how can you possibly experience connectivity problems related to the Toronto area when you are living in Richmond?”

Hmm - I get it. Now I have to convince him that I live in Richmond Hill, ON and not Richmond, BC.

Two days later Bell has not fixed the problem yet. I’m posting this through my BlackBerry. Lovely!

To Bell: in addition to all screen captures of modem types in use posted on that intra/extranet, you should make available a at least a Google Maps lookup tool, as well. :)

I have just finished reading the free eBook manifesto - Trust Economies: Investigating the New ROI of the Web by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Excellent piece!

I’m starting to think that B2C has now changed its meaning to “Business to Community”. What’s your opinion?