Review by ozar 
UPDATED: 187 days ago
member for 1.6 years, 606 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 USA
 $103 per month (24 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Occasionally able to get decent speeds for this area"
 "Speeds drop off a great deal several times daily, must reboot modem every few hours"
 "Horrible service overall, expect much better performance considering monthly payment"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
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The only other options available to me in this area are dial-up, cable, and satellite. The cable service in this area is down quite often for no apparent reason, so I didn't consider that as a viable alternative.
I'm currently on the "Up to 10.0M download / 896k upload" package and the price I've listed for this review includes my regular phone line, plus the DSL service.
The initial order process (about 5 or 6 years ago) went fine and while it was a self-installation, the actual DSL signal was reaching my line in about 3 days and I was up and running. I started out with the 645 Series modem supplied by Sprint/Embarq and the 1.5 M download package, then I upgraded when 3 M package was available, then again when 5 M download package became available. In all cases, the upgrade was totally painless and without any effort on my part. However, when I recently upgraded to the 10 M downloads package, Embarq sent me a new modem (Embarq EQ-660R) that was supposed to be easy to install, but it turned out to be very problematic and took several different Embarq support techs a number of hours to get things so that I was up and running again.
The newly supplied modem drops the DSL sync signal quite often, but intermittently. In fact, it will sometimes drop out about every 5 or 10 minutes during the evening, then the signal re-syncs and you can connect again. Another thing that I've noticed that happens frequently is that the speed will suddenly drop drastically and I get download speeds around 5M/7M. Rebooting the modem will usually get things going faster again.
I recently replaced the ISP supplied modem with a D-link DSL-2540B modem/router and have not lost sync again since doing so. I've also not noticed the degraded speeds suddenly appearing, but I'm not certain just yet that all is fixed, as it's only been a few days since the ISP modem was replaced.
Update (04-28-09): the speed of my 10 Mb/s connection has dropped to about 2 or 3 Mb/s and stayed there over the last 4 days. Rebooting the modem doesn't seem to help speed it up any longer.
Update (05-17-09): just wanted to update my review to say that the speed finally did move much closer to the 10 Mb/s that I pay for, but I'm back to having to reboot the modem every few hours, or sooner, in order to maintain decent speeds. I'd definitely give Embarq a lower score for connection reliability if there was a lower score available. Otherwise, their DSL services are mediocre. Hopefully, the CenturyTel/Embarq merger will bring some improvements, but I've learned through experience not to count on it. Time will tell, and I'll be back here to report on whatever happens, either way.
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