I can't believe this story...

I have had a DSL connection @ my house for over a year and a half with bellsouth DSL. Well the last 3 days they have been having problems with their network and I have called them several times (I am on dialup right now). They told me nobody works on the weekend and there is nobody even on call so if the network is down *shrug* we have to wait until monday afternoon for someone to go look at it. There are hundreds of customers out locally and they say *oh well, we dont have people working on the weekend. I would love to be able to get away with telling a customer .. "Ya the 5 mbit line on your box right now is kind of not working, I guess I can get around to it in 4 days".. Just terrible and of course no local competitors.

and create significant legal barriers to any new competition, then you can get away with it.

Well, the cable company is not much better, but at least they have people working on weekends(at lest at the place), at anyrate if there is cable in your area, I would get it.

Two quick points:

1) I don't know if your DSL is residential or business, but most providers treat residential issues on a much lower priority than business-grade issues. If you had a T1 from Bellsouth, you bet someone would be working on it on the weekend. At least that's what I've been told.

2) I've had issues on the weekends with my Bellsouth DSL (residential) and have gotten "ok" support. I had to be transfered a couple of times until I found someone competent enough, but it was solved in the end. I never got an excuse from them that there were no techs available to help. As far as I know and have been told, they are 24 hours. I've never called them at 3am, though... :)

I find the call center in Virginia (West Virginia?) to be the best one. I get sent to Atlanta many times and get very poor results.

It is a business DSL line. I guess enough yelling and someone actually got into the office and fixed it for me :)

I tried to get DSL in Atlanta from BellSouth! It was fun.

Watch now as you will see my progress in attempts to get connected.

July 30: BellSouth says DSL is available at my location! I place an order. I should be active in 10 business days, so saith the BellSouth Customer Service Rep!

August 12: BellSouth says there are problems! What kinds of problems? These mysteries are far too vast and mysterious for mere Customer Service Reps! Never fear -- my service should be active in 5 to 10 business days!

Early September (a Friday): BellSouth says there are -- yet again -- problems! Customer Service Reps play ping pong with my call, evidently to amuse themselves while listening to me cackle in insanity whilst on hold. But yea -- a manager will call me back on Monday.

The following Tuesday, 6:00 pm: A BellSouth manager calls me back, and so saith he, DSL service is not available in my location. I say thank you, I will be using cable now.

Thursday, 9:00 am: AT&T Broadband rep installs a shiny new cable modem at my house. Service reps are very friendly, and even help me set up my unsupported home router!

The following Monday: My BellSouth DSL kit arrives in the mail.


Oh, I miss those times.

Bellsouth sucks! Said the same thing to me, told me I could get DSL, had me on the phone for 5 days straight, each time I was told something different. Finally, after almost two weeks I'm now told it's not available in my area. So I said screw bellsouth, I went with Adelphia cable modem (I had DSL before in another town). Cable modem is MUCH faster, and more reliable. OH, and tech support is 24/7/365, and they are fantastic. Everyone knows what they are talking about (UNLIKE Bellsouth, where seven different people will tell you seven different things.) Go cable. Screw DSL...

Cable is ok as long as a lot of customer are not in your area. I had a cable modem for a little while in a city and it got slow during peak hours.

Well, as far as cable goes, I'm in Suwanee, GA, and it's about 35 miles north of Atlanta. I have been getting average speeds of 96-120k/sec and have at times (when the site I'm on supports it) seen about 220k/sec! So yeah, cable has ALWAYS been faster than DSL, where I'll be lucky if I can get to 100-120k/sec.

Cable all the way...
(the tech support is paramount)

BellSouth can't possibly be worse than Verizon DSL. Can't possibly.

I have a Verizon InfoSpeed Business DSL line in the office which I pay about $100 per month for.

1) When I signed up, I asked how many static IP addresses I got. Reply: none.

2) So I ask, well, how much does it cost to get, say, 5 static IP addreses? Reply: Can't do it - don't offer static IP addresses.

3) So I say, this is a business DSL line, right? What do you mean you don't offer static IP addresses? Reply: Well, we don't do it. We have a few areas where we can offer them, but in your area we don't offer static IPs at all.

So, well, anyway here I am with a DSL line. No static IPs, but at least the thing works, right?

4) On Christmas Day, I come into the office just to check e-mail and return any phone calls and so on. I sit down at the computer, wow, no Internet connection. That's odd. So I call Verizon's tech support. Sit on hold for 45 minutes. Finally get a LHB and say, hey, my DSL line is down, what's going on? The Reply: Well, it's Christmas, no on uses their DSL on Christmas, so we pulled all the DSL circuits offline so we could use that equipment to route additional phone calls since we get so many phone calls on Christmas. Your DSL will be back online tomorrow.

Jerks.

If AT&T offered cable modem service here, I'd switch. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no other option than Verizon.

Count your blessings.

Jason