 Review by doublea 
Posted: 1.3 years ago
member for 2.5 years, 54 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Petaluma,Sonoma,CA
 $30 per month
 about 4 days
 "good price, reliable connection."
 "horrible speed and ping, over congested servers, only improved after 4 hour long calls, and was swapped to diffrent server."
 "You get good service if you tell them you will cancle if they dont fix something."
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(ratings match consensus)
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Att dsl from 2001-2008 - my story -
We have had Pacific Bell/SBC/Att - yes 3 name changes in the time we have had it, for 7 years now. They were good for the first 3 years, perfect, but back in 2002 dsl service was not yet oversold and congested. The last 4 years have been more bumpy. But Back to the beginning, our first Speed was 1.2 mbps, 250ish up, $26.99 monthly, going from our a-o-HELL dial up Pacific bell DSL was a dream. I put some good usage on our dsl, we have 2 pcs, and 2 laptops, downloading videos (legal) and other large files was a dream, dsl in 2001 was a speed dream. Suddenly in 2004 our wonderful 1.2 mbps slowed to a whapping 22kbps, slower than dial up, this happened every night, getting progressively worse at 9pm and it eased up after about 11pm, obviously it was from too many users. Over the next week I made more than 5 calls, and had 2 techs out.
Some of the excuses I was given on the phone was the line quality could be bad, your computer is old, there could be moisture on the line at night, dsl speeds fluctuate sir..... oh boy was I fuming mad, none of the service reps could give me a reason why my speeds were slowing down during peak usage that was an honest answer.
1 - Every line quality test the techs did returned perfect (My house is less then one block from the "box" (Sorry geeks I don’t know the technical term.)
2 - My pc was a brand new 2.4ghz HP with 1gb ram (Hey in 2004 that was a decent pc.) could not be the thing slowing down my dsl.
3- Speeds fluctuate? 1.2mbps to 22kbps is a normal fluctuation? Not in my book.
Finally the 2nd tech that came to my house apologized to me many times, I was in fact experiencing slowdowns from a overloaded "redback" server he called it. He had me switched over in less than a half hour.
So I went on another 2 years as happy as could be, its now 2005, but we decided to upgrade to the 3mbps service, those videos and stuffs were beginning to feel less zippy, and the speed test kept saying we were getting the full 1.2 megs we were entitled to.
So we were upgraded to 3mbps (2.6 mbps reality), the first day on that was a dream, until 9pm, I suddenly realized the same problem that faced me 2 years ago had come back to bite me in my behind. speed test at 9 pm returned 8kbps, 8k!, dial up could wizz by that before it had a chance to know it. So the next morning I made a few calls, same old stories, "moisture on the line sir" YEA RIGHT, just send a tech out here I said. surprisingly 2 days later a tech came out, Kind of an old guy, but very kind. He had a hard time getting used to vista, I was his first customer to have a vista computer. He quickly adjusted to vista though, and the tests came back I was on an exhausted redback server AGAIN, same problem 2 years later. the tech support guy waited on hold 45 mins, and then got the problem fixed. 3mbps, perfect service I was happy, this time my nightmare only lasted 3 days, but I spoke to soon, the next morning my internet felt sluggish, speed test returned 1.2 mbps, odd huh, that was my old speed on the 1.5 meg loop, and the speed test didn’t bounce around, it was a smooth 1.2 megs, Surely I called in, yep as I expected I was put back onto 1.5 meg service, but the support on the phone had that fixed in less than 5 mins and I was told to restart my modem (and router.)
And well since then life has been perfect again a strong 2.6 megs all day, But im on oklands service im told, which confuses me because I love over 2 hours away from okland, apparently my local server is always overloaded, I don’t quite understand what happens in the background, but also when I do speed tests it says my ip originates from okland. (I live in the north bay btw.)
My ping is really fast, 9ms to yahoo.com, and videos always download smooth, as files are becoming larger, podcasts, videos, sling box and other devices, Im really sucking down my 2.6 mbps and 406 kbps up bandwidth all day long. (A bandwidth usage monitor on my pc showed I use more than 25 gb of data in a week on my one pc. ) I play online video games quite a bit (PC) and I love my ping, heh other people can be having lag and rubber banding issues, I will never experience that, always smooth as can be.
Now I want to upgrade to the 6mbps service, but I know better, im sticking with the 3mbps service until I get an apple tv, or the expected Netflix set top box.
All in all I have mixed feelings about Att.
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