DSL providers?

[Taylor, Kirk]

I am also a RR customer (couldn't get employee discounted Qwest DSL to my
house)... and I've been happy with the service, certainly... but it is not
without its problems:

1. no static IP addresses.
2. 4 hour+ outages in the last 3 weeks.
3. customer service is typical for a cable company (ie, it sucks, IMO).
4. If they need to come to your house to fix a problem, expect 3 days
(minimum) before you can schedule an appointment.
5. that old adage that the more people in your neighborhood that sign up,
your throughput goes down (I've watched this happen for 8 months now).
6. no static IP addresses (yea, I mentioned it twice... but for good
reason).

Also, word on the street is that there are a couple of companies that will
be rolling out broadband wireless in the next few months.  Whatever you do,
choose carefully... and, if you can, find a direct number to someone who
works w/ your service provider (your sales Rep, for instance) and tell them
that when the shit hits the fan, you will be calling them directly. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tia Haenni [mailto:TGHaenni at earthlink.net]
> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 3:46 PM
> To: Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster; kclug at kclug.org
> Cc: a_gottipati at yahoo.com
> Subject: RE: DSL providers?
> 
> 
> I totally agree!! I have Road Runner and have been very 
> pleased. I work from
> home and wanted to go with DSL, but it wasn't available yet 
> in my area. My
> boss has SWB DSL and his speed and reliability are far below 
> mine. Besides,
> no DSL company I ever talked to could beat RR's free install, no extra
> equipment other than a NIC, and no contracts for $40 a month.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster [mailto:hutchins at therune.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 3:16 PM
> To: kclug at kclug.org
> Cc: a_gottipati at yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: DSL providers?
> 
> 
> So how come you want to switch away from cable?  I presume you have
> TimeWarner/AmericanCablevision/RoadRunner if you're in a KC 
> group.  Most of
> the people I know haven't had any trouble with their 
> connection.  Mine's
> been rock solid for over a year.
> 
> RR has had horrible problems with their Mail servers, but so has SWB.
> There's a lot of complaining about the newsservers, but then 
> there always
> is, UsenetNews isn't a stable, reliable system no matter 
> who's linking you
> to it.
> 
> Sprint's alleged ION service runs over SWB copper, and has to 
> be switched
> out of an SWB station at some point.  There are rumors that 
> this traffic
> gets the lowest priority service from (competing) SWB 
> support, but of course
> that would never happen.  Last I heard ION was a great deal 
> if you do lots
> of long-distance, need a second phone line and lots of 
> "services" on the
> phones, and oh yeah, you did have a computer that the kids 
> use sometimes.  I
> have Sprint for long distance and the main reason I don't 
> bother to get
> something better is the nightmare of dealing with their 
> Customer Service to
> cancle it!  And do you remember any positive experience 
> dealing with SWB's
> Customer Service?
> 
> American Cablevision used to be just as bad, but the new 
> TWC/RR national
> call center seems to be a much more professional operation.  
> I've worked
> with them a couple of times to get a user's connection 
> problems solved - it
> wasn't their fault, the user had deleted all of the files in 
> their Windows98
> root directory.
> 
> Whatever your problem with Cable, you'll pay more for less 
> bandwidth going
> to DSL.  You'll also probably have to deal with PPPoE instead 
> of TCP/IP.
> 
> 
>