 Review by myosh 
member for 12 years, 2987 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 2.1 years ago
 Cupertino,Santa Clara,CA
 $20 per month- (12 month contract)
 about 2 days "Speeds increased to 12 Mbps (4 times what I can get with DSL), promo pricing" "None so far" "I'm headed back to Comcast HSI from AT&T DSL"
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(ratings match consensus)
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I have had AT&T@Home/ATTBI since November of 1999. It's been over 2 years so I guess it's time to review AT&T Broadband (both @Home and ATTBI).
Ordered AT&T@Home back in October of 1999. Because cable had just become available in my area, there were alot of people signing up. That resulted in about a 30 day delay in getting my cable modem installed. The tech showed up within the scheduled window I received when I placed my order. The install consisted of splitting my cable line and running a cable to where my computer was and unpacking the cable modem (I got a General Instruments SurfBoard 2100). They wouldn't touch my computer because I was dual booting Windows 98 and Linux but they did give me the DNS server address as well as my gateway and static IP address (the static IP lasted for over 1 1/2 years before I was told to use DHCP). My initial monthly fee was $39.95 but the first month was free.
Over the past 2 years, I experienced only a couple of outages. When I was down, I was able to call tech support to find out what's going on and the people I dealt with were very nice and offered me a $5 credit for each day the service was down. I did have one billing problem where they continued to charge me $10/month for 2 IP addresses I requested and then cancelled after I got my Linksys router. When I called to correct this problem, they apologized and credited my account about $40 for 4 months of overcharges.
The transition from AT&T @Home went about as smooth as I could expect since @Home decided to pull the plug. I was down a total of 3 days with service being restored on Monday after @Home pulled the plug. My download speed was cut in half (~3000 kbps before switch and 1500 kbps after) and yes, I wasn't happy about it but thinking back to when I ordered my service, I was told my download speed would be 1.5Mbps. It just so happened, @Home didn't cap my download speed. That's something I can live with.
Surprisingly, the "2 days for each day I was down" promise from AT&T was honored on my December 2001 bill. On that bill there was a $15 credit for "service interruption". I also decided to return my leased modem and buy a Motorola SurfBoard 4100. That reduced my monthly cost from $45.95 to $35.95.
Tech support after the switch required a whole lot of patience. When I wanted to know what I had to do in order to "register" my newly bought cable modem, I had to endure a 3+ hour wait in the chat queue because others were trying to talk to tech support because they either had slow or no service due to the switchover.
Overall, I'm still pleased with my service from ATTBI. My experiences with tech support have been relatively painless and I give AT&T alot of credit for getting me back online when @Home pulled the plug back in early December of 2001.
ATT Broadband Price Increase:
ATTBI increased my monthly rate to 42.95/mo from $35.95/mo. The reason for the increase was a $7 reduction in the own-your-own-modem discount. That sucked but at least I ATTBI gave us modem owners $7 coupons which would last for 6 months (just enough time for me to pay off my cable modem... yes!).
ATT Broadband Speed Bump:
Got my download speed bumped from 1500 KBit/sec to 1800 KBit/sec.
Comcast Transition Update:
My transition was pretty much a painless process. I did not use the Transition Wizard. Instead, I manually changed my e-mail and newsgroup settings (Eudora for MacOS X and Outlook Express 6 for Windows) and I haven't had any problems. It appears that my ATTBI e-mail is being forwarded to my new Comcast account and fortunately, I didn't have to get a new user ID so all that changed was the stuff after the at-symbol (@). Speeds still are decent and fortunately, no Giganews yet.
Comcast Update:
Download speed was increased from 1800 to 3000 Kbit/sec however, I don't notice a difference while surfing and it was a month late according to a schedule posted in the Comcast forum. No Giganews yet (still using netnews.comcast.net). In order to chat with customer service, need to install crappy Comcast software which I refuse to do so customer service chat is out (boo!). Definitely not happy with 7-10% rate hike for CATV in Nov '03 (2nd hike in 2003).
Not-so Final Comcast Update:
In May of 2005, I cancelled my Comcast HSI and switched to SBC DSL Pro Package (3 Mbps down/512 Kbps up) at 29.95 per month. Speedwise, I notice no speed difference between SBC Pro and Comcast HSI (3 Mbps) except my DSL upload speed is much faster than Comcast's.
March 2011:
After being with AT&T DSL for 6 years, I'm headed back to Comcast HSI because AT&T decided to implement a 150 GB cap plus overages on all DSL customers. So today, I signed up for Comcast's Performance package which gets me 12/2 service (15/3 with PowerBoost) for $19.99 for the first 6 months. As a former customer I had to chat with a sales rep to get the installation charge of $35 taken off because I already have a coax cable running to where the modem will go. Instead I got the self-install kit for $10 which should be arriving in a few days. So far the sales process has been pretty smooth. On my way home from work, I stopped by Best Buy to pick up a Motorola SB6120 which is now connected and powered on. I can access the modem and look at stats and logs but I can't get an actual connection until my self-install kit arrives.
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