But I’m thinking of switching to a faster connection, and I’m seriously thinking of DSL through SBC. Any advice? Recommendations? Cautions? I see from my logs that several of you out there use SBC; are you happy with the service? Thanks in advance for your feedback.
16 thoughts on “Still . . . on . . . dialup . . .”
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I have had SBC DSL for about two years. I’ve never had an issue with it not working. However, four side notes:
I had a lot of problems with the installation disk. SBC claimed there was some conflict with the disk and Windows ME then led me through the process manually. Annoying, (and I wasted about 3 hours before calling) but it’s reassuring that their techs zipped me right through this. So, this probably won’t happen with you…hopefully they have fixed the glitch or you are running a better version of Windows or a Mac.
I don’t know if it is because I have a lot of stuff on my SBC Yahoo start up page or what, but it seems like it takes a while to load…like it’s on dial-up speed. Other than that, it moves pretty darn quick.
Next, and what REALLY pissed me off. I agreed to a year subscription at $29.99 a month. I have no problem with that. One day I got my SBC bill and it was outrageous. I looked at the DSL part and it was $59.99!!! Of course I couldn’t dial fast enough. I was told that my $29.99 a month for a year discounted rate had lasped…the year was over and now it was $59.99. I was SUPPOSEDLY sent a discounted rate renewal notice in the mail. Also, they didn’t refund any part of that $59.99. It was on my next bill, also. I call. I was told it was the billing cycle I was on. So, it takes them 45 days to get info. from the telephone answering people to the billing department. They did refund me the $30 on the second charge on the NEXT bill..75 days later. There is still a post-it note on my monitor as a reminder for this year.
I’ve been with SBC for almost two years. I’m paying $24.99 a month. The new higher speed DSL is available now for $29.99 and there is an offer for first time DSL subscribers at $14.95 a month if you sign up online. I’m sure there is some introductory offer clause in there somewhere. But us veteran SBC DSL users aren’t feeling the love. Hey, I know I locked myself in at $24.99, but that was the deal at the time. But will I get the $14.95 rate in 3 months?
All in all I’ve never had any agonizing issues with SBC DSL. Sorry for the long post.
We have MTCO DSL and love it. We’ve had both SBC DSL…wasn’t great and we’ve had Insight Cable…expensive. MTCO is $29,95 per month and is as fast as cable but without the SBC headaches.
Is MTCO DSL even an option where you live (by Bradley University)?
I’d go with cable, since you probably already have it. I spend just $30 a month on it that way and Insight’s customer service is FANTASTIC.
Kara Harris lives right across the alley behind me, so apparently MTCO is available where I live, although I was surprised by that myself. I thought cable was more expensive than $30/mo. I’m pretty sure my parents pay more than that.
If you get DSL, you won’t need SBC’s software to use it. You probably won’t need MTCO’s either. The disc makes a nice frisbee. I got a relative’s PC running XP to work just fine without using Insight’s cable software.
The software these places provide is often more trouble and more complication, than is really necessary.
Kara: your DSL has a 4 meg download speed??
CJ,
You should check with your neighbors and see if they’d like to get together and share a T1. The cost on those has dropped significantly in the area… in some cases as low as $100 a month. You could organize this through your neighborhood association. Decide where the T1 should be run, erect a small tower with some WiFi antennas and blanket the neighborhood in cheap, fast, wireless broadband. You could force everyone through a portal page listing community events, public notices, etc. Maybe even add some advertising to offset the costs.
Wouldn’t it be great if the neighborhoods that did this shared some sort of authentication system so that if I paid to access the WiFi in the area around Bradley, I could also use your network when I was in that area? That’s the logic that led to system Peoria Wireless is trying to build.
You aren’t getting what you pay for with cable and DSL, nor are these companies investing in a broadband future for Peoria. SBC is one of the largest lobbies in Springfield. Why would a technology company need to lobby the state of Illinois? Because when some MBA in an office in Chicago ran the numbers, they found it would be cheaper to try to lobby to keep a monopoly on consumer data connections than invest in R&D and deploying new technologies.
You should read Bruce Kushnick’s ebook about the ‘$200 Billion Broadband Scandal’ before you buy either cable modem or DSL…
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm
“America is 16th in the world in broadband and the US DSL current offerings are 100 times slower than other countries such has Japan and Korea. How did we go from Number 1 in the web to 16th in broadband and falling?
But more importantly, are customers owed $2000 for a fiber optic service they paid for but never received? Did towns and cities, libraries and schools, government agencies, and every residential and business customer subsidize new networks that never showed up?
And did America lose $5 trillion in economic growth, $500 billion annually, because of these missing networks?
Broadband Scandals is a well-documented expose, 406 pages and 528 footnotes. Using the phone companies’ own words (and well as other sources), the book outlines a massive nationwide scandal that affects every aspect of state of the Internet. Not only the web but broadband, municipalities laying fiber or building wifi networks, not to mention related issues such as such as VOIP, cable services, the cost of local phone service, net neutrality, the new digital divide, and even America’s economic growth.”
I’m not a tinfoil hat wearing wing-nut, nor am I working with Peoria Wireless for personal gain. I have more bandwidth in my office than most of Peoria’s businesses. Bradley has a 10Gbps connection to other Illinois colleges and universities through iWire. I can transfer an entire DVD of content from my office to the U of I or Northwestern in seconds.
I am working with Peoria Wireless because I believe Insight and SBC aren’t actually competing for my business with better service or a lower price, but draining millions of dollars from the Peoria area with their near monopoly positions. I know first hand the type of things that are possible when bandwidth is cheap because I already have it. I know for District 150 to truly realize the return on their investment in a LMS, more parents of those students need to be connected.
Anyone who looks into why DSL and cable data connections are so expensive will find that something there doesn’t add up. When you look at the cost of providing wireless to a small group in your neighborhood and the benefits of building a network that scales citywide, you’ll find yourself supporting Peoria Wireless’s efforts as well.
—
Kevin Reynen
Director of Instructional Technology
Slane College of Communications and Fine Arts
Bradley University – Peoria, IL 61625
AND VONSTER…
Before you post any of your mindless snipes, you should know I’m looking forward to the opportunity to use legislation pushed forward by the civil liberty trampling administration you support to file a complaint against you for violating Sec. 113 of the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act.
http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyance%2C+go+to+jail/2010-1028_3-6022491.html
I’m not sure Vonster. Whatever it is, it’s faster for us than cable and sbc dsl was.
With regard to Kevin Reynen’s post, whatever one may think of SBC (now ATT), it does not hold a monopoly. Any business can follow the process of filing as a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) with the Illinois Commerce Commission. There are many CLEC’s (such as MTCO) doing business in Illinois. CLEC’s can follow the same local right-of-way process that SBC must follow and connect with copper or fiber optic cable to any customer chosen. Most CLEC’s choose, for financial reasons, to lease cable and facilities from an ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) such as SBC/ATT. The large ILEC’s are even required to lease floor space in local switch buildings to CLEC’s.
Kevin Reynen suggests that some group such as a neighborhood association lease a T1 from somebody, put up an antenna, and offer WIFI. This is doable but not nearly as simple or inexpensive as he seems to suggest. A single T1 is not going to support that many users. Where is this T1 going to and what is the cost for internet access? To really provide the bandwidth that most people would desire one would need one and possibly more T3’s for a neighborhood. Maintenance of the antenna and associated equipment would be an ongoing expense. How is the cost of this going to be funded and by whom?
The bandwidth that Kevin Reynen enjoys at his office was most likely funded or at least subsidized by taxpayers. It is not free; somebody is paying for it.
I can’t speak for SBC or MTCO DSL, as I’ve never used either of them. I’ve been on Insight cable since I moved to Peoria a couple years ago, mostly because I want cable TV service but don’t use a landline phone.
1) I use Linux operating systems on my computers. Their setup procedure for Linux is a pain in the butt, but it worked fine for me. I never had to install software or other such nonsense.
2) Bandwidth has always been as advertised. I average a solid 4 Mbps down and 384 kbps up.
3) I haven’t tested to see whether they port-block [web, mail, ftp, etc.] servers. Cable ISPs are notorious for doing this more than DSL providers.
4) I’ve only had one long service outage; it lasted about 36 hrs after a storm last year. Besides that, uptime has been very good.
Rant) I agree with Kevin’s post about the anti-competitive business practices of the major residential broadband service providers. The Baby Bells are especially bad, and SBC is probably the worst of all. They refuse to un-bundle DSL and phone service and they have publicly stated that they have no desire to act as a common carrier, among other ‘evil’ things. They stand right up there with Microsoft as companies that wish to screw their customers instead of serving them.
normally cable is faster than DSL, 1.5 meg to 2.0 meg down and DSL in most cases is less than one
I don’t understand the person saying they are getting 4meg, that is not possible in a residential application – you can go to dslreports.com to check your actual speed
I went to the website of MTCO to see what is up and their $29.95 service is 1.5 meg…very good, very cheap if I could get it where I live I would in a heart beat, I have never heard of a price that good for high speed
here is a link: http://www.mtco.com/internet/adsl.php
I pay $50 for 1.5 to 2.0, take this and run
have fun
Tumbleweed, you make it sound so simple but sadly it is not. Forget the whole leasing thing for a moment. Why are there not more companies laying their own lines? If it were so simple then surely we would have multiple lines from multiple companies hanging from our poles. But it is not so simple. Sure the federal government now allows companies to lay their own line. The state may allow for it too. But there is a whole mess of layers of government regulations on where and how lines may be layed. In fact some municipalities limit how many lines can be put on poles as well as their configuration. This is no accident. The old big phone company wants these regulations in place. The more barriers there are to entry, the happier the big AT&T (or Verizon) is.
I also want to point out that CLECs do not have the same requirements and limitations that ILECs do. Example…
CLEC are not required to service rural areas. ILECs are. CLECs can focus their core business strictly in the most viable profitable areas. ILECs have to shoulder coverage over a much larger area, including areas that may not be profitable at all.
ILECs are required by law to offer for lease their lines and even space in their buildings. Not only that, if they don’t have the space, they must create it. The rates are fixed and often at a loss for the ILEC. That loss is made up in higher rates for ILEC customers. CLECs are under NO such obligations even if they lay their own lines. Why lay your own lines if leasing is so much cheaper.
The trade off, is that through careful lobbying at all levels of government, being able to lay line is very very difficult. That same lobbying is working overtime to overturn the privilages that CLECs enjoy at the ILECs expense. There have been some recent court decisions laying foundation toward these ends.
From Mahkno’s comments I evidently failed in at least one of the purposes behind my post which was to point out that the issues behind what Kevin Reynen was suggesting were not nearly as simple as he seemed to suggest. Indeed, understanding what the choices are, and why they are that way is somewhat complex. Most of what Mahkno states is, I believe, precisely correct.
This has gone way beyond answering the simple question of what are my choices. If this discussion is giving anyone a headache I apologize.
Mahkno is correct that the right-of-way requirements place a burden on anyone who wishes to place new infrastructure and this would tend to discourage new entrants from starting and incumbents from replacing infrastructure. Where he errs I believe is his impression of why those right-of-way requirements exist. Units of government have placed these requirements to limit the number and placement of poles (poles are ugly!), to ensure that power and other utilities coexist safely with each other and with vehicles and pedestrians, to limit how often streets are torn up, and in some places to obtain revenue.
And lobbyists, yes, there are lobbyists! ILEC’s have lobbyists in Springfield and Washington. So do CLEC’s. And yes, even municipalities have lobbyists. State utility commissions have lobbyists in Washington. We may not lead the world in net speed but we certainly have to be right up near the top with our lobbyists. An ILEC in one place may own a CLEC in another. That must complicate the lobbying a bit.
Back to the original question in all this – CJ, you might want to take a look at packages offered that bundle two or more services together – could save you a few dollars.
Kevin, you presented a lot of information in a very short space. I’ll follow your link and look into it, but I don’t have the time to devote to it right now. Thanks for the explanation, though!
Thanks to everyone else who offered advice — I never realized there were so many options!
Charles, thanks for commenting — didn’t know you read my blog. Glad to have your advice as well. Did you get my letter?
Chris,
Sorry for not responding sooner, I haven’t been on your blog since I posted. I love your blog, you do a first class job. Your writting and opinions are as good as I have seen I think this could lead to things…I have many ideas like the obvious one of running for office but that is another subject for another day.
Yes I got your letter and I, and Jeannie, were thrilled. I should have responded sooner and without your question, I am working on that, but it was really neat to get a hand written letter. As you and I talked about it is so rare to get the old fashioned mail it has become even more of a treat than it used to be. I think I can be confident in saying that is the first hand written letter I have gotten in..hmmm, 20+ years? If I have gotten one addressed to me during that time then I can not remember. THANKS AGAIN
By the way, what did you do about the highspeed?
Say Hi to Amy and the kids…you still lovin the house?