 Review by DustySilicon 
member for 9.3 years, 1037 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.7 years ago
 Oak Grove,Jackson,MO
 $40 per month about 7 days CenturyTel "Rock solid & fast connection." "It was not available sooner." "Great service for a great price!"
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(ratings well above consensus)
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Good things come to those that have to wait. . .
After 10+ years of some of the worst ISP's and connections to the internet (from dial-up, ISDN, satellite, WISP), DSL has finally arrived at our rural suburban home. TG.
After a few months of waiting for CenturyLink to finalize the installation of our new DSLAM, it was officially activated on 12/15/09 and I ordered service that same day. Activation was scheduled for 12/21/09 (Merry Christmas!)
On the Friday before activation the new 660R modem arrived via UPS in pristine condition -- my 17 year old is now about to bounce off the ceiling and can't wait for me to install it on the evening of the 21st 
Setup was simple (especially since I completely rewired my LAN and phone connections in preparation for the activation with CAT5e cables.) After plugging in the modem and connecting it to my laptop, a few web pages later, our connection was live and speeds were excellent, compared to our 1MB connection with our flaky WISP, yet not quite as fast as I expected. . .
I next connected the router to the modem (Netgear) and asked my wife to test out her work connection (she does medical transcription remotely). It worked fine, however, she said she was getting a buzz/hum in the background of her phone connection -- hmmm... let me think, I connected 4 DSL filters to all of the phones in the residence, but now I'm thinking did I miss one? Sure enough, there was a phone on her desk that was plugged in as an after thought and it had no filter! I unplugged the phone and had her test dial her transcriber again: buzz/hum GONE! I tested the internet connection again and a documented 30% faster connection was now possible from the first speed tests. (NOTE: DSL filters are VERY IMPORTANT on all phones & satellite boxes!)
It is now day four and our 10MB connection is ROCK SOLID FAST; not one hiccup, burp, fart, etc. The wife is extremely happy, the teenager is thrilled, and I am finally at peace, just in time for Christmas.
By having to wait so long for Embarq/CenturyLink to install the DSLAM that services our residence, we got the latest and greatest equipment, so there was a bright side to having waited so long. The entire installation of the DSLAM could have been much faster if it were not for our local power COOP's ridicules demand of $10,000 to run power from a pole approximately 50 feet across a tar & gravel road to the DSLAM! Shameful that West Central Electric would stymie an upgrade that would benefit their customers access to the internet -- I guess they would rather peddle their Wildblue crap to more people. Anyway, CenturyLink simply "end arounded" them and contracted a local company to run the power cable under the road for a fraction of what WCE wanted -- way to go CL project manager.
We love our new connection -- thank you CenturyLink and Embarq_Joey for putting up with all of my IM queries on the status of the DSLAM installation, it was well worth the wait.
»www.speedtest.net/result/661313282.png
»www.pingtest.net/result/6177197.png
5/26/2010: Still a rockin solid connection. Only a couple hiccups (middle of the night) brief resets. The only bad thing I can say, is that now with a solid connection to the internet, a lot of those sites I used to think were slow because of our crappy WISP service are just SLOW sites i.e. Rotten Tomatoes is one that comes to mind.
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