For several months now, SBC Ameritech has wished that KPMG Consulting would just go away. Now it has, but not in the way that was hoped.
KPMG Consulting was the firm auditing Ameritech’s compliance with requirements by state regulators to open its networks to competitors. It won the contracts in all five Ameritech states–Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio–and in all those states Ameritech has disagreed with its auditors over various details.
Last month KPMG Consulting became history as it changed its name to BearingPoint. So now Ameritech can fight with BearingPoint over how to interpret and measure its compliance.
Consulting arms of old-line accounting firms have been splitting off to go on their own since Accenture broke away from Andersen in 2000, and the collapse of Enron Corp. has underscored the drawbacks to having the same firm provide auditing and consultation services to a client.
The disagreements between Ameritech executives and its auditors have delayed the review processes that aim at certifying that Ameritech is in compliance with competitive requirements. That certification is necessary to obtain approval for SBC Ameritech to offer long-distance service to its Midwestern customers.
In Illinois, for example, the firm once expected it would be offering long-distance by now, but it will be at least next year until that happens. Meanwhile, SBC is faring much better in California, where it nearly has long-distance approval–a process that was also marked by long, unexpected delays.
Still surfing: Television technology may change, but viewers’ habits don’t, a new survey finds.
Randomly clicking from one channel to the next until settling, however briefly, upon something of interest has long been the preferred method for watching TV and apparently retains its appeal even when viewers get digital cable or satellite service.
A recent survey of 856 couch potatoes found that 71 percent of those with analog service used the random clicking approach. Among digital TV viewers, 82 percent of cable customers and 77 percent of satellite customers used the same system.
Only a minority chose to use the interactive programming guide supplied to help them make viewing selections, the survey for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing found.
One ringy-dingy: Wireless phones are now owned by about 60 percent of people in Chicago, according to results of a survey for Verizon Wireless, and almost half say they are using their wireless phone to make long-distance calls they previously would have made on a traditional home phone.
One-fifth of Chicago wireless phone owners said they make most of their long-distance calls from their cell phones, which helps explain why long-distance and local phone companies have seen their revenues drop this year.
The survey was taken this summer and included about 400 Chicago residents.
Health check: Physicians are getting more technologically adept, but they still lag far behind in using e-mail, a new survey from the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society finds.
Almost 80 percent of some 5,000 doctors and other health professionals responding to the survey said they don’t use e-mail to communicate with patients. In contrast to their aversion to e-mail communications with patients, physicians are warming to computers in other practice aspects.
For instance, nearly three-quarters of physician offices have at least someone who uses a hand-held computer of some type and nearly 70 percent of doctors said they use computers in some aspect of clinical practice.
There are probably several reasons why doctors avoid e-mail communications with patients, said Carla Smith, an HIMSS executive.
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“Physicians may believe that their patients don’t use e-mail because most medical forms don’t ask for an e-mail address in the first place,” said Smith. “However, increasing e-mail usage will take more than changing medical forms. A culture shift needs to happen.”