 Review by bokamba 
UPDATED: 229 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 2959 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Falls Church,Falls Church City,VA
 $20 per month (12 month contract)
 about 14 days
 Verizon
 "Pretty reliable connection, decent tech support, competitive price"
 "No static IP, slow upload, connection issues if you're far from the CO"
 "A decent option overall"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Ordered 768/128 DSL in March, over the phone. It took them at least a couple of weeks to get everything set up and to send us the equipment (it's free self-installation), but the service has been smooth.
Equipment they gave us: Westell WireSpeed DSL modem, and 5 microfilters, which was enough. We had to purchase our own network card to connect the modem to our PC. For me (a pretty experienced computer user), the installation was no problem.
Sadly, they only offer PPPoE using WinPOET, but it's not too bad for my purposes. The most annoying part of it is that you have to run a program in the system tray just to be able to connect.
Once the service was set up, I noticed that the download speeds were pretty low. Thanks to DSL Reports' Tweak Test and the DrTCP utility, I was able to get the connection up to full speed, but it would have been nice if Verizon had provided me with this information.
So overall, Verizon has been good to me. I recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to worry about long service contracts or smaller ISPs that might go bankrupt, a la Northpoint.
UPDATE: I ditched WinPOET, and started using RASPPPoE. It's much better!
UPDATE: As of Jan. 2003, no issues, other than the fact that RASPPPoE occasionally screws up (or maybe it is Verizon's fault). Nothing serious.
UPDATE: Jan. 26, 2003 -- service has been slow today. I'm almost positive that it's on Verizon's end, but after spending a long time on hold, the tech wasn't very helpful and told me (after trying one thing that failed) that she couldn't help me since I don't use their PPPoE software and I don't have their default settings on my computer. How ridiculous.
UPDATE: Jan. 27, 2003 -- Found out that the service problems appeared related to packet loss. Talked to an intelligent tech (no hold time!), who helped me out greatly. Seems the problem may be with Qwest rather than Verizon; when she switched me (temporarily) to a Genuity account, the speeds and line quality went back to normal. If the problem doesn't go away by week's end, I'm going to switch my GSP from Qwest to Genuity.
UPDATE: March 16, 2003 -- The packet loss problem went away. Sticking with Qwest, although given their financial difficulties, that could be a mistake.
UPDATE: May 28, 2003 -- I've taken advantage of the new $34.95 per month rate, but I'm too far from the CO to get faster speeds.
UPDATE: August 20, 2003 -- The packet loss and latency problem is back. This time, I can't even get through to tech support; I am disconnected because there are too many people on the lines, and this has happened for 2 days in a row. I have downgraded my rating of their support.
UPDATE: April 23, 2004 -- I'm thinking that Verizon should put in a new CO to make faster DSL available to me, but they haven't. Actually, our neighbors directly across the street can't get DSL for some reason!
UPDATE: August 4, 2004 -- We've had connection reliability problems recently. Not acceptable, and tech support hasn't been helpful.
UPDATE: November 24, 2004 -- no problems recently. We aren't able to upgrade to a faster tier, though.
UPDATE: June 5, 2005 -- we upgraded to the 1500/384 tier about a month ago, once it was made available too people at our distance. We also started having intermittent sync issues possibly related to the higher speed. After some troubleshooting on the phone today, a ticket was opened to have the network folks check our line out more thoroughly. I had a good experience with the support folks today (3 different people since the line got disconnected twice, not Verizon's fault), so I'm upgrading my rating of the tech support. I'm downgrading my rating of the connection reliability. We might have to go back to the slower tier since our modem is apparently working at 97% of capacity at the higher speed tier.
UPDATE: June 10, 2005 -- a very friendly, very experienced tech came to the house today (two days late). Bottom line: we're really, really far away from the CO (perhaps as much as 20,000 feet, and the wire in our neighborhood is 26-gauge, which is thinner than DSL prefers. So we're going back to the lower speed tier in the hopes that it will bring back connection stability. But now our upload speed seems to be 75 kbps, when previously it was always at least 128 on the slow tier. The technician was a great guy; knew his stuff and did it quickly. After he finished, we chatted on a whole variety of unrelated topics for quite a while.
UPDATE: January 4, 2006 -- things are still running all right, though it seems like disconnections have become an issue. Still waiting for FiOS to be available; that will be a much better deal once it comes to our neighborhood.
UPDATE: March 30, 2006 -- switched to the $15 per month plan, since it's at the same speed. It's a 12-month contract, but that shouldn't be a problem. I estimate it'll be about $20 a month once taxes and fees are added.
UPDATE: February 13, 2007 -- No connection problems. The 128 kbps upload speed is definitely a more serious shortcoming nowadays.
UPDATE: May 21, 2007 -- Connection is perfectly stable but 128 kbps upload is killing me. Waiting for FiOS, which will hopefully arrive eventually.
UPDATE: January 12, 2008 -- Still working fine, still waiting for FiOS.
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