 Review by lcompton 
UPDATED: 1.5 years ago
member for 1.5 years, 263 visits, last login: 23 days ago
 Exton,Chester,PA
 $15 per month
 about 14 days
 Verizon
 "USD14.95/month Fixed (Not a teaser rate!)"
 "Not a true broadband experience in terms of speed"
 "Better than dial-up at about the same price"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
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(ratings match consensus)
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Hello.
I've been a Verizon DSL (Starter Plan) subscriber since December 2005. The price is unbeatable at USD14.95/month. Speed tests with SpeakEasy.net reveal that the performance is roughly as advertised (768Kbps downstream/132Kbps upstream). However, not all traffic appears to flow at equivalent rates through the connection.
Verizon's DSL Starter Plan (often referred to as DSL-Lite) is not a true broadband experience (vis-a-vis unrestricted DSL, FiOS or cable). However, it is most certainly several times faster than 56Kbps dial-up, which makes the DSL Starter Plan an excellent value for the money.
I had cable Internet access for about four years at USD42.95/month (plus the television service that Comcast forces you to subscribe to in order to avoid paying USD57.95/month for their Internet access.) I switched to the inexpensive DSL service from Verizon when I lost my job and was unable to find work. Today, I am still chronically underemployed -- unable to find a decent-paying job.
There doesn't seem to be any forces to hold or drive down the cost of true broadband service, which is unfortunate. The lack of competition is enabling Comcast and Verizon to control broadband pricing in the worst way. The industry norm has been to advertise teaser rates to get subscribers and then blast the subscriber on their subscription anniversary date with rate increases.
Verizon's DSL customer service and technical support exhibit the same deterioration common throughout the industry. It's bad. In fact, it's very bad. This is certainly true of Comcast as well. Assuming you get to speak to a live person, which is no simple task, you'll likely be greeted with incompetence and cluelessness rivaling the comedic lunacy of DUMB AND DUMBER with one notable exception -- your technical support call isn't a movie.
Comcast and Verizon seem to use a (stupid) model for determining network problems. They wait to see how many support calls they receive before they'll conclude that there is an outage. It is hard to believe that they do not leverage readily-available technology to alert them when they have an area outage, but they don't.
My last call to Verizon's technical support was for a DSL outage. They insisted that there was no outage and proceeded to walk me through a mindless melee of troubleshooting steps, which included fooling with the Verizon-supplied DSL modem, blaming my Linksys wireless router and asking me probing questions about my computer. Honestly, the new paradigm for idiocy in the 21st century is technical support. I decided to terminate the call with Verizon's useless technical support and accept that the outage would continue until they received enough calls from the same area and then decided to dispatch a technician to resolve the problem. DSL service was restored about two hours later.
All things being equal, the only reason to go with Verizon's DSL Starter Plan is financial constraints. If you can afford the unrestricted DSL, FiOS or cable Internet access, then absolutely go for it. DSL-lite functions, but you'll know that you're not enjoying a true broadband experience.
Thank you for reading my review.
Good luck!
Lisa
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