Go Paperless, Yes Indeedy ! When You Give Me DSL...

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Go Paperless, Yes Indeedy ! When You Give Me DSL.

I got shifted to "go paperless" options at every turn when trying to pay my bill at ATT.

Now I'm sure the executives at ATT think all of us out here in rural areas are morons for not going paperless. Afterall, they can look at their bills on line and flip page to page effortlessly, in their fiber optic cocoons of the future. Us peasants, however, out in the hinterlands, are stuck with flaky dishes or s l o w dialups, and don't have the time to wait 45 seconds or more between pages.

So why do we need to flip through pages like executives anyway ? Well the other day I noticed my bill was a bit high and discovered a new charge for $6.95 had been added for an "extended voice mail" plan. I had never requested such a thing. It was a third party add-on. Apparently ATT thinks it just fine to bill us for whatever any third party says we've requested, without even bothering to ask us if indeed we have requested it. Had I been viewing online at dialup speeds, I might not have bothered to wait to explore my bill so thoroughly. As it was, it's taken several calls to get this charge removed. How many others out there are been scammed the same way ?

So here's my offer to ATT. You get me a reasonable price for a DSL connection, and I'll go paperless.

Frankly, I think the entire country should be wired equally, and damn the cost. It's a utility, and should be available equally to all citizens. Yes it costs more for people to vote in rural areas, all that expense of driving the machines out there, but we still do it, regardless of how few citizens there are, and how inefficient it is. Rural folks are being deprived of their right to be equally seen and heard in the Cybersphere, and to receive information. We are second class cybercitizens, and that's discrimination by geography.