Review by ndwbr 
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 6.4 years, 1124 visits, last login: 1 days ago
 Atlanta,Fulton,GA
 $42 per month
 about 3 days
 BellSouth
 "ordered online, no problems"
 "if i had to complain about anything i guess it would be the price"
 "blazin fast 6m service - i don't know why Earthlink said they couldn't provide this, it's over the same phone line LOL"
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I was a Mindspring/Earthlink customer for 10 years, paying $49.95 for 1.5Mbps service but only ever getting 1.2Mbps (according to both speedtest.net and speakeasy.net/speedtest). I'll forego the story where I talked them down to $39.95 a few years back for another day.
I decided to upgrade to 6Mbps service but Earthlink claimed on repeated phone calls to Customer No-Service that it wasn't possible where I lived (1 mile from the capitol in the heart of downtown Atlanta). That was the last straw, as I have become increasingly disappointed over their "barely English" follow-the-script phone support. I shopped around and prequalified for AT&T/Bellsouth's 6Mbps service ($42.95) and effortlessly placed an order online.
This morning, exactly 3 days later, my DSL service quit and would not acquire an IP address from Earthlink. I figured the service had been switched over. Since I had recently helped a friend to switch, I knew what the password would be and simply entered my new AT&T/Bellsouth id and password on my router (which has one wired desktop, one wireless laptop and a wired TIVO box connected to it). I didn't even receive the installation kit from AT&T yet but I'm up and running at blazing fast 6Mbps service on the old Alcatel SpeedTouch Home DSL modem that Earthlink gave me years ago. Oh, and if switching your email address is keeping you from changing providers from Earthlink to something else, don't let it - for $3.95 a month they'll let you keep your email address. I figure I'll keep it for about 3 months while I switch over and then ditch it.
Follow up: The box from AT&T/BellSouth arrived today. Here's a question: Can any one suggest a reason why I should replace the ancient Alcatel Speed Touch Home DSL modem I am currently using with the one that just arrived in the mail? BTW I have a 100ms ping time; is this a factor of my distance from the CO or would the newer modem help that?
3/8/2008: Have had AT&T/BellSouth DSL Extreme for almost 2 months now. Speedtest.net regularly rates between 6 and 6.5 Mbps down and between 400 and 450 Kbps up. I don't know of any outages at all during this time. One thing that's odd is that my IP address keeps changing. I actually like that and think if you don't have a static IP it's a good thing that it changes regularly. When I was an Earthlink customer, I think I sometimes kept the same IP address for weeks. Now the one pet peeve I have is rebates! I was supposed to get a $75 refund for my modem and another $50 refund for ordering DSL Extreme online. The AT&T rebates website recognizes the modem refund, but doesn't list the other refund. I got ahold of someone on the phone yesterday (less than 5 minutes wait time to talk to Shaneesha) and she says she is putting the $50 refund in the system and I have to go online to order it. We'll see what happens. So far, however, I'd say my experience with AT&T/BellSouth has been a positive one.
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