[LUNI] Cable / Dsl

[Branko Kotur]

Some people are just too far for any kind of decent DSL speeds.  I'm over 
13,000 feet from the CO, so the best speed I can get is 1.5Mbps down.  And 
just barely.  SBC (back when it was called SBC) wouldn't even offer that 
speed to me.  They would only give me 784Kbps.  I had to go through Speakeasy 
just to get the 1.5Mbps.  However, I have to pay more to get it.  On the flip 
side, I'm happy to pay more for the privilate of not having to talk to some 
half trained outsourced tech support.  

Back when I first switched to Speakeasy, Comcast wouldn't even offer me a 
static IP which I needed.  Also, the "new" AT&T seems to be worse then SBC.  
One of my customers had phones and DSL installed and both were messed up from 
the begining.  I spent half the day on the phone with DSL tech support trying 
to fix the problem.  Someone else was on the phone with the phone tech 
support for 2 days.  The very next day, my dads DSL stopped working and it 
ended up being the same problem.  Luckily, I was able to fix it without 
calling since I already knew the solution.

Personally, I think AT&T is screwing everything up.  I haven't really dealt 
with Comcast, but when they were MediaOne, they didn't seem to have a clue 
either (I ordered cable TV and it took them a week to figure out why the 
signal was unviewable).  

On Thursday 27 September 2007 1:00:24 pm Mark Stuart Burge wrote:
> So from the 'Cable Modems' thread, it seems like a lot of people are a
> touch disgruntled with their ISP.
>
> So that begs the question..
>
> Why so many cable users ?
>
>
> I am interested to know what you all ultimately pay for the broadband
> connection of choice.
>
> Myself, I have been using sbc's dsl for about 4 years now and pay an
> average of about $40 / month inc the phone line
>
> Broken down, thats $10 line charge, $19 dsl and the rest split between
> call charges and taxes.
>
> I regularly download iso files without needing to use torrent and the
> modem that came with it was brand new and mine to keep.
> Down time I think was about 20 minutes one day (the only time it has
> ever been down in 4 years to my recall)
>
> On the negative side, I would say that I need to reboot the router now
> and then (maybe once a month max), possibly due to spikes or something,
> but I think that is just hardware.
> Oh, and their default dns is a little slow, but nothing that opendns
> can't remedy.
>
> Every time sbc(att whatever) decide to increase the price, I call them
> and start a new contract to bring the price down  to the new promo,
> which usually works out cheaper still.
>
>
> So,
>
> I am assuming there must be a good reason why so many people are using
> cable.
>
> Is it for a static IP?  for higher upload speeds ?
>
> (or maybe att can't scrape off the ameritech from their shoes and it is
> leaving a bad smell in the room)