Review by quickhop 
Posted: 10 years ago
member for 10 years, 5 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago
 Fairfax,Fairfax City,VA
 Contract price not specified.
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Bell Atlantic (BA) offers aDSL through its own ISP and through several others. I chose to use another, Potomac Networks (PN).
First, pre-sales info. I placed a request almost a year ago to be informed when DSL would be available at my location. Their site said April 1999. As each month passed by, they just changed their site to indicate next week or next month. Fed up, I wrote to BA with the belief that this might be deceptive advertising in an attempt to draw me away from competitors. Finally, in late September BA called to say DSL was finally available. I made the appointments for installation for October 4 & 5.
The installation of the splitter and wiring went fine and a transmission test indicated very near the stated speed of 640Kbps downstream and better than the rated speed upstream. I have had no inteference problems.
My account had been set up with PN the previous week, so I should have been surfing that night, right? Oh, no. PN said they were having problems with BA's routing and that they "were working on it." Day after day they said the same thing. After a week of no service I called BA. It took about an hour on hold to finally get to someone who promised quite courteously that it would be checked and fixed within 72 hours. I waited patiently. After 3 days I called BA again (over 1 hour wait on hold) and they said absolutely everything was correct at BA's end and it was PN's fault; I would have to go back to them. Now, I'm pretty frustrated.
PN, too, was courteous, but could not solve the problem. Every day I would call to put on some pressure. I called BA technical support twice again (each time over an hour wait) with no results. Finally, after another week, PN got through to BA (they had to wait hours on hold as well) and BA determined they had my connection routed to their own ISP, BellAtlantic.Net. Bummer! So, a proper routing configuration and a reboot did the trick, but I had lost almost a month with no service.
TIP: Don't get DSL unless you also get some security solution. Various hardware and software solutions are available. I went with a cheapie, BlackICE Defender, and it seems to work quite well.
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