Communications Companies need a lesson in Communicating

[#1]

Yesterday I reason to call PN but gave up after hanging on for nearly 12 minutes. I then had to ring my mobile provider and gave up after hanging on for 10 minutes.  Last week I had the mother of all nightmares trying to contact a certain department at BT which began at 8:00am and was still not concluded at 6:10pm.
Why are so-called "communication" companies so bad at call handling?
I feel sorry for the staff as usually when you do get through, they are so polite and helpful but you are so frazzled from all the "press 1, press 5, you have 287 options" that they get it in the neck. 

[#2]

Hi FrillyFrog,
I certainly take onboard your points made, as being on hold is not something I like to experience. We do however always try and schedule for the anticipated calls that will be processed, however there are always peaks and troughs and we always try and keep call queue's to a minimum.
You can view our current call times at http://csc.plus.net prior to making a call, so you then know if there would be a wait or not.
Very rarely our our call wait times high, but there are always going to be instances where spikes occur, unfortunately it looks like you called during a spike of calls.
Thank you for taking your time to post and I hope I helped expand on the points you have made.
If you have any further questions please ask.
Chris