 Review by RPM Jack 
UPDATED: 2.1 years ago
member for 8.3 years, 4397 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Lake Jackson,Brazoria,TX
 $24 per month (12 month contract)
 about 167 days
 Southwestern Bell
 "Solid service once it is installed and stable; hit a few capable support people"
 "Overall poor customer support & poor customer communications"
 "I still recommend it to my friends in this area."
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I went through a version of DSL hell to get service initially, which included some of the "typical" problems: at least three instances of "no show/no communications" by technicians for scheduled installations, at least two instances of "equipment exhaust" conditions in my area, at least one case of the order being "lost" (they migrated to new order system in June 2000, but my order was not "migrated"), and several situations where a disconnect order was issued when I did not have DSL service. One such disconnect order was issued in August 2000 and I was advised to let that order be processed and "clean out" the system to prevent future problems. As I did not have service at that time and my area still had an equipment exhaust, I agreed. I followed up to ensure that the disconnect had been processed and a new order placed, and I was told that the equipment exhaust was still in effect; later, I was told that I was scheduled for provision on September 21. I was later told that it had been provisioned on September 14.
I put together a time line of that installation process, but in summary, I placed my original order on March 29, 2000, was originally scheduled for installation on April 10, 2000, and after fighting multiple problems, my service was finally in place and usable on September 15, 2000 - I "guestimated" that to be roughly 167 days between order and successful installation. To make things even more frustrating, I had communicated the SBC promotion to several friends in my area and two of them placed orders in the same frame as my original order - and they were in service in either April or early May 2000.
Regarding the equipment, I was originally sent an USB modem (4060?), but due to a conflict with my processor chip set/motherboard, I was sent a 5260 modem and (later) a Kingston NIC. I am using Enternet 300 - I believe I am still at the V1.3 level so I will pursue the V1.5 upgrade mentioned in other postings on DSLR
My DSL service was disconnected on July 2, 2001, and after wading through their support process again, I was finally told on July 5 that a disconnect order issued back in August 2000 had resulted in the termination. Their solution was to issue another disconnect order and allow it to "clean up" the system (same process I went through in August 2000), place a new order and start over. I was rather surprised that it took 11 months for a disconnect order to be processed, but I was told that they had a large back log! I was also told that part of the problem was that I did not have a CIF (customer information form) in one of their systems and that a new disconnect order/new DSL order would rectify that problem. In the meantime, I could use their dial-up service but unfortunately SBC does not have a local dial-up number so I would have to dial long distance; luckily, I had retained my service from a local ISP after obtaining DSL so for the most part I could utilize their service. I did hit a few bumps when some eCommerce sites asked that I use my swbell.net account to correspond with them as my local ISP prevents mail spoofing, so I ended up dialing into SBC using a Houston number to generate those messages. I was notified on July 17 that the disconnect order had been processed and a new order had been placed; I was back on-line via DSL on July 18, 2001. The 15 or 16 days beween the disconnect and the restoration of service looks very good relative to my misadventures in 2000 but I was still frustrated over the outage and the support.
Most of my complaints about customer support mirror some of the other postings on DSLR. The initial installation process became a joke as it stretched out for some 5+ months; support was laughably poor until I hit a self-professed "bulldog" that attacked the problems. SBC did agree to credit me for two months of service after all of the hassle, but since they have so many systems involved, it would take several months for that credit to impact my billing.
When my service was disconnected, I hit the same unwieldy support process but at least they managed to cut down the overall turnaround time. During the first two days or so of that outage, I was bounced back and forth between ASI and the other groups. At one point, three people told me that my service was disconnected and they could pin the time down to something like 1:07PM on July 2 for the removal of my entry in a router, but they could not tell me why it had been disconnected. Three other people told me that everything looked good and that there were no disconnect orders issued for my service. Finally, as I began to contemplate violence, the 14th person I had contact with actually investigated the problem and worked with me and their process to resolve it. Another person then got my new DSL order and expedited it in great fashion - basically one day turnaround from getting the order to service being restored. Unfortunately, their feedback system essentially focuses on the last person to work on the problem and ignores the chain of people leading to that dedicated, competent person.
My apologies for the long discussion of my problems - sometimes it does feel good to vent!
Overall, once the service is in place, it is excellent. I can recall two or three outages between September 2000 and July 2001, and they were resolved by the next day. According to DSLR, my speed is 626 kbps download, 94 kpbs upload, while pcpitstop.com shows 1234 kbps download, 113 kbps upload. Per the Analogx Netstat Live program, I hit peaks of 1791 upload/251 download yesterday during the same general time frame as running the DSLR and pcpitstop tests. In any case, the performance is certainly far superior to my old 56K modem speeds but I will check out the Tweak section for additional improvement. I am running the Netturbo utility to "optimize" my settings.
Oh well, I am still encouraging my friends to sign up for DSL; cable is not a viable alternative at this time in this area (maybe 2003?).
Update: After running a tweak from pcpitstop.com, DSLR shows my speed to be 1176/102. Netstat shows peaks of 1662/243.
2001/07/25 Bob (ASI) left me a message at home asking that I call him and let him know how the re-connection went. I followed his instructions but no one was able to locate him or access the extension he provided! Sorry, Bob, I did try; one lady tried three different departments but was unsuccessful. In any case, a great big "THANKS" to Don (ASI) and Bob for their efforts to diagnose/resolve my disconnect problem and then expediting the re-connection; they truly went that extra mile to provide outstanding service.
I am seeing an odd problem now when I utilize Outlook Express to access my e-mail on SWB, my old dial-up ISP, and multiple accounts on Yahoo and Hotmail. OE consistently "hangs" attempting to check mail on Hotmail. I can stop the processing and restart the send/receive cycle, but when it attempts to hit Hotmail, I get the popup about no connection, click "work offline" or "retry." I click retry and it is able to access Hotmail and then processes the other accounts without problem, including another Hotmail account. I did not have this problem immediately prior to the July 2 DSL disconnect, I did not have the problem while utilizing dial-up for two weeks, but now I hit it consistently on DSL. I am able to browse successfully while OE "hangs" accessing Hotmail.
Update 4/2/2002
The DSL service remains fairly consistent and I have suffered relatively few outages - I believe I have hit two outages so far in 2002 and both were resolved the next time I attempted to connect after returning from work. I have been unhappy with the bureaucracy on the administrative side. I was told in August & September 2001 I was due several credits due to the disconnect problem noted earlier in the review. Approximately half of the credits had not been posted to my account by the end of March 2002, which resulted in notices of service interruption in January and April due to my alleged failure to pay the costs that were to be credited. I contacted SBC in January regarding the credits and was told that they would make it through the system and be posted in "2 or 3 billing cycles" and that they would update my records to prevent the service interruption; they still had not been posted when I received the next notice of service interruption March 30 (effective April 8). Once again, I contacted SBC and after reviewing my account history, Priscilla made the decision to re-issue the credits and conferenced in SBC billing to ensure they were aware of the situation and to update their records to avert the service interruption. I was pleased with Priscilla's handling of the problem; hopefully I will not be updating this review next week with news of a service interruption!
"Mandatory" update 10/10/02
SBC finally managed to credit my account with the costs, both real and phantom, from the disconnect crisis in July 2001. Beyond that, little has changed. I am using a Linksys router now to handle the PPOE authentication and to provide additional security or "peace of mind;" that forced a minor change to my VPN configuration but nothing significant. My speeds seem to have decreased lately according to BBR and speakeasy, but not so much that I feel a need to waste my time complaining to SBC. I assisted two friends in migrating to SBC DSL (the new self-installation kit is quite an improvement on what I was given), and their speeds as measured by BBR were superior to mine! I convinced one friend to install a router, and he followed the lead of several people he works with by going with a Netgear box. Both friends have had outages lasting a day or more. The person with the router has had significant problems with SBC e-mail and has retained their old dial-up provider's service so that they can use their mail server; the other person has used Yahoo Mail for several years and did not use any of the SBC mail accounts. Overall, SBC's DSL service has been very reliable and provided reasonable performance over the last 6 months or since my last update.
"Mandatory" update 9/9/2003
My DSL service has been relatively solid since the last update. On at least two occasions, I thought the service had been interrupted, but I found that my Linksys router had "forgotten" my data and reconfiguring the router resolved the problem. The service also survived a recent hurricane/tropical storm hitting a few miles from my location. My recent speed tests are in line with the earlier values. I have not had any further problems with billing since the issue over the credits was resolved, and now I am considering re-ordering the service to obtain the lower rate ($29.95). I finally dropped my local dial-up ISP account, which will save me $19.95/month, thanks to the reliability of the DSL connection. A side note: a friend's DSL modem was "fried" recently, apparently due to a lightening strike. Originally he had routed the phone line through a surge protector but he bypassed the surge protector during a trouble-shooting episode and he forgot to re-route it after solving the problem. That same friend discovered that he had been moved from copper to fiber but the line configuration had not been modified, resulting in poor performance; the configuration was corrected after approximately three months when he complained of the poor performance.
update 9/2007
Currently I am on the Pro version but still on the legacy mail infrastructure. Service has been solid - my only calls to ATT regarding my DSL service in the past few years have been to re-rate my service. My intermittent checks of my speeds have been solidly in the appropriate range for the Pro service. My original DSL modem continues to churn along without incident. Some of the ATT documentation related to the legacy DSL environment appears to have problems but I have been able to resolve e-mail configuration or newsgroup access issues without engaging the live support.
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AT&T Southwest
