Holy Exposures Commentary and Photos of Israel

Bezeq or Hot?

I’ve been a long and loyal customer of Bezeq’s ADSL broadband service pretty much since its inception. Lately, things haven’t gone as well. Constant line interruptions, dropped connections, broken page loads, etc…

Speaking with Bezeq on their 166 support line is not all that bad. They are courteous and do try to help. Especially if you establish early in the call that you understand technology and that you want to work with them to find the problem.

After several calls, and then two subsequent visits by a technician to our house, our line problems have intensified. The noise on the line has gotten significantly worse. Yesterday Bezeq informed me that there’s too much noise on my line and that they can’t support the 5mb speed that i’ve had for over 2 years. They want me to drop down to 2.5 and wait for the next generation fast internet that Bezeq is building the infrastructure (that may even support up to 300 MB lines).

I told Bezeq I wasn’t interested in lowering my bandwidth and that I wanted them to have an engineer look into fixing the problem. It must be something that happened recently on their end. Three months ago, they did move me to another WAN and things were better until this past month. There are remedies other than telling the customer “too bad”. I argued that they are selling more lines then they have capacity, but they haven’t increased their infrastructure to meet these new users.

My problem with Bezeq’s answer is that they are taking the monopolistic easy way out. Essentially, they are saying to me (and to other customers I presume), “We’re too busy to deal with your current problems. Lower your expectations for a while and then we’ll surprise you with a really great new service, but we have no committment as to when that will be. It’s as if the Bezeq engineer has the last word…

We’re all in this together!

Do you use Bezeq or Hot (Cable) for your broadband ADSL internet access? Are you satisfied with your current provider? Have you noticed any changes in your line’s stability over the recent months? If you do or did have problems, did Bezeq make you lower your bandwidth to resolve it?

Please add your comments here.

This article was posted yesterday on techexposures.com and it definitely gives us something to think about what’s in store for the hi-tech industry in Israel during the coming months.

The Financial Crisis - Internet startups will suffer

I attended a conference of about 40 CEOs and founders of start-ups last week in Herzlya, Israel.  The focus of one of the meetings was to discuss the current financial crisis and how it will affect the operations and viability of these companies.

One of the CEOs commented that he had just raised several million in capital for his start-up and that the money had hit their account only three weeks ago - just on the cusp of Wall Street’s meltdown.  He said he felt like Bruce Willis in Die Hard as he ran as fast as he could from a burning skyscraper that was about to explode.  He remarked that had the deal been delayed for even a week, he probably wouldn’t have been able to close the round, or that the terms would have been severely altered.

In attendance were also partners of some big name VCs.  One of the VCs (who is headquartered in Silicon Valley) told us that he has already instructed his Israeli portfolio companies to begin firing employees.  In his words,

“It is not enough for the CFO to tell me that they didn’t hire the 3 that were in budget.  They also have to fire existing employees”.

He believes that this (recession) downturn will last throughout 2009 and into Q1 of 2010.

Another VC thought that the amount of deals in 2009 would be lower, but that there will still be dealflow, and that this is actually a good opportunity for raising smaller sums (e.g. $200K).  The bigger VCs have traditionally avoided investments of less than a few million dollars.  Now it appears that many VCs will be ‘competing’ with angels and private equity groups to find the gems out there for $500K or less initial investment, with an eye on sustaining them until a Series A round can be raised in better market conditions.

The affects of the fallout from Wall Street in the coming months are too early to measure, but it’s clear that most sources of new funding will dry up at least until the credit crisis has passed.  Existing companies will have to squeeze their purse strings tight, and possibly begin proactively laying off to ensure enough capital remains to keep the mother ship afloat.