DSL provider recommendation

Wed Jul 23 16:49:18 PDT 2003

Quoting Alberto Begliomini (aub at coldstone.com):
> I am shopping around for a DSL provider!
> 
> SBC has been way too unreliable in the past few months. My connection was 
> down for 2 weeks because they made an administrative mistake, and they 
> had to re-provision the line again! This morning our connection was down 
> for more than one hour, and SBC does not have any clue of what happened 
> (of course, they asked me which version of Windows I am running!)

And that won't change with another IP provider on those wires.

I live on a hill.
Guy up the street has a very directional antenna going
into downtown.  To a T3.  From a tall flagpole.
>From flagpole, it goes to a box with a little magic
and to OTHER antennae.  Which the neighborhood sees.

No DSL (SBC will screw up your line no matter who the IP
comes from).  Giving up ATT/Comcast cause the price has gone
up 30% in the last year (no, I don't want cable.  tv is
bad, mm'kay?).

I USED to have DSL before I moved.  Static IP on SBC
(I was early).  It ate it every saturday for an hour.
I grumbled and they slowed me down - "you're too far
for the rate it was set it" (on saturday AM only?).

When I moved, I tried to tranfer it to my housemates.
No joy.  They called to get DSL and were told it
wasn't available there.  Um, it was disconnected
2 days ago.  "No, you're too far away to get DSL."

/me awaits when the 96' telcomm act will create competition
and let me choose to smack the SBC execs with the stick
of "no thanks."

Grumblings from the fine field woman who came to my house to
install my phone when they had to dig up road to pull new
cable and find the paved-over phone junction.  It was offered
that SBC funnels a lot of money out of the Bay to the less
profitable south.  in other words, bay area is very profitable,
but they share tools among techs because they don't get NEARLY
that budget back to run things well.  At least with PacBell,
the money didn't go too far away.

> Any recommendation for a dencently reliable DSL provider that has a 
> support team that has at least half clue of what they are doing?
> 
> Thanks in advance, I'll summarize the answers.
> 
> Alberto