wrote:
> At&t now offers their regular DSL service (up to 1.5
> Mbps) for $19.99 a
> month, and a high speed (3 to 6 Mbps) for $24.99 a
> month. Do you have any
> experience with the higher speed service to know if
> it is reliable?
No experience with that, Sandy, and I'd hesitate to
make any comparisons. First of all, my current
contract-year probably has a few months left on it,
and was made with SBC. So I'm not familiar with the
packages they are offering now. I started -- several
years ago -- with their base DSL package, which I
think was 384K downloads.
(ANY of the advertised speeds are "targets" that you
have to take with a grain of salt; I don't think you
will actually see them in the real world. There are a
whole bunch of bandwidth Test Sites out there, but
their locations, routing, and methadologies vary, so
you may need to consult a few of them, and use them as
*relative* yardsticks only.)
At the last contract renewal, I stepped up one notch
in service (768K ??), and substantially reduced my
monthly charge, down to $35. Even this required some
external hardware improvements (may have involved what
they call a "remote terminal," and better or
fiber-optic cabling, plus they had to reprogram my
existing DSL modem -- I'm a bit hazy on exactly what
they did on the outside), in order to make this
service available to me. At the time, SBC informed me
that I could step up to 3 or 6 Mbps, at steadily
escalating price levels, and I declined -- for the
time being -- based on what I was willing to pay. If
AT&T, which took over from SBC, is now offering what
you say, at the price you mentioned, that will
definitely be something to ask for at the next
contract renewal. If that is the case, it can only be
due to competition from cable. Time Warner has taken
over here from the execrable Adelphia, and I think
their base cable modem service is around $35./mo.,
though I don't know the claimed speed, offhand. They
are advertising it as "3 X the speed of DSL", but as
we know, one needs to compare apples with apples. You
always have to ask, WHICH tier of DSL ?
Once you go past this 6Mbps, I think you are in T__
land, which is intended for businesses that need this
and it gets quite expensive.
Jordan
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