[Fwd: Re: SPUG: ISP Recommendations US West and DSL]

[Joe Slagel]

"Kenneth W. Meyer" wrote:

> Joe -
>
> I have been with Alternate Access for several years, and DSL with them for about a year.  You can get their DSL connection for $17.95, and through US West, the wire is $29.95 for a direct connection and $19.95 for a pooled access (at the DSLAM, not at the ISP).  With the latter, you're still always connected to the phone-line, but you need to be assigned a port when you light-up the keyboard, much like dialing-in and getting a modem port.  I have heard some complaints about service in the GTE domain, but what else is new?!

Both home and work are currently with AA.net and I was
thinking about alternatives because of a number of reasons.

> I have had no real problems at all with US West reliability.  Only one down-time that I am sure was their problem.  However, there can be a real hassle getting support from these guys, and you may end up speaking with Denver and Phoenix and Seattle before it's over; I would imagine that Covad is much better about this.  We had an outage on our phone line; and for about a week they kept bouncing me around and claiming that the problem was in our house.  Of course, I swapped the wires for line 1 and line 2 at the outside box and the problem remained on the other line, so they finally fixed it.  I think they drowned some cables during a spate of heavy rain, but it was Hell to get them to face up to it.
>

Funny, I was having exactly the same problem with my US West
DSL.  The service rep said the same thing, the problem was
in the house (he said he left the cover of the box
unscrewed).  Interestingly enough when I checked the box he
had looked at the WRONG box, and tested a disconnected
second line to the house.  Fiddling with the right box
seemed to get everything to work.  Funny, I thought it might
have been the heavy rain too...

>
> In all, I find this to be a good service with a real local presence, and it seems to me to be a good price for something that doesn't involve accepting obnoxious advertisements.
>
> Anyone with contrary experience out there?
>
> Ken Meyer
> kmeyer at aa.net

Thanks for the info

- Joe

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