 Review by MSeng 
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 9.3 years, 5922 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Crystal Lake,Mchenry,IL
 $34 per month
 about 7 days
 Ameritech
 "Consistent high speed, low latency"
 "Tier 1 Tech Support (not)"
 "Extremely fast and reliable service (for me)!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I was approached by Ameritech back in May, 2000 about the time I was having a bit of trouble with my regional dialup ISP. The salesman was very knowledgable and even offered to call me back with answers to network and sharing questions he didn't know. He called back when promised and indicated that I could do whatever I wanted with my network and sharing after the installers left.
Based on his responses, I ordered the Ameritech Speedpath package which advertised 768kbps downloads (with minimum 384kbps) and 128kbps uploads for $40\month. The best selling point was the fact that hardware and installation were free. I was given an appointment date about five weeks away, with a four hour window for arrival.
The day of my scheduled apointment came BUT THE INSTALLER NEVER SHOWED!! After 1-2 hours on hold and some calm reasoning with a Supervisor (I threatened cancellation!!) I did get scheduled for an installer visit within 2 days.
The installers did show up when rescheduled. They tried to install a USB modem, but I insisted they set me up with a Westell Wirespeed external modem so I could plug it into my LAN. The installation itself was a breeze, my PPPoE connection with dynamic IP address was up and running in less than an hour. Since the initial installation, I have run the gamut of changing my connection, started out using ICS and All Aboard for sharing, then dumped Enternet and went to RASPPPoE, now using SMC Barricade Router.
Ameritech has experienced a few network problems in the Chicago area over the past year but recently the service connectivity and reliability have been outstanding. A very conservative uptime estimate if averaged over the course of my contract (to date) is approximately 99%. Not too bad considering this is still a technology in its formative stages. As I said before, when it works it's fantastic.
Latency has been great (DrPing score of 68), speeds are consistently averaging up to 650kbps down and 136kbps up. Typically, my router will hold the same IP for an average of 200 hours (today I am on 344 hours and counting).
Technical Support Center is (in my opinion) improving. The few times there have been problems, I have never had to speak to an operator since they are very quick to acknowledge problems via the Network Update recorded message. Can they improve? I would love to see some more on the Newsgroup servers. Should I expect notices regarding outages? It's nice to think so but I can't recall any of my previous providers giving me this courtesy why should I expect it from Ameritech?
All in all, I am satisfied that I am getting my moneys worth for this service. I am waiting for announcements regarding new package offerings, but will more than likely continue to use Ameritech and will probably continue to recommend them to my friends.
(2/2002):
I recently upgraded from 768/128 to 1500/256. Download speeds are consistently averaging 1270 down and 240 up and latency has decreased.
There was a slight delay in completion of the update to my profile, but for the most part, it was a very satisfying experience. If it weren't for the lack of coordination between departments, then the grade for installation coordination would have improved.
I'm still very satisfied with the Ameritech package and do not expect to change providers in the near future.
(1/13/03):
Almost a year has gone by and my 1500/256 continues to provide me a reliable and fast connection to the Internet. Based on the excellent performance over the past year, I have increased the Connection reliability from 4 to 5. All in all, I am extremely satisfied with SBC Ameritech DSL and have not hesitated to recommend it to my friends.
(7/29/03):
In the past six months, I have migrated my Ameritech account to SBC Yahoo!. The migration was quite simple (I followed the instructions in the Funhouse FAQ - How can I make my migration painless? (#6886)]. I picked up a few extra e-mail accounts (if needed), the Yahoo Briefcase is a nice chunk of storage space and the customized Yahoo! DSL pages are a nice portal to work from. One nasty by-product of the migration was an increase of SPAM mail, it took a little bit of time to configure my mail application to ignore it.
I had my first outage in a long time a couple weeks ago. I was (for the most part) impressed with Tech Support's attempts to help me out, but was more impressed with the assistance and information provided by the official SBC santioned support people that hang around the Funhouse. Other than this hiccup, the service has been rock solid. I will continue to recommend Ameritech DSL service to my friends.
(2/10/04)
A couple interesting events over the past six months....first of all, I lost my unbundled loop after three years over a billing\database snafu. The switch to linesharing was painless (thanks to help from the SBC sanctioned support help available through BBR) and my connection has had 100% uptime since.
I upgraded my account to the Expert Plus Package recently made available from SBC. Although the package states speeds of 1.5-3.0 down\384 up, the actual connection can range from 1.5-6.0 down\384-608 up. Service was just updated this evening and my initail results were quite impressive - ~5.0 download speeds and 500 up. Time will tell if this stays consistent.
All in all, I continue to be impressed with the service provided by SBC and will recommend this to anyone interested in going from dialup to braodband.
(1/8/05)
SBC continues to provide me with a fast, reliable DSL service. Speeds continue to be consistent (~5000 down/500 up) and absolutely no connection issues. There was a period in Nov-Dec, 2004 where the provider had some hardare issues but they put forth an effort to resolve them as quickly as possible. I will continue to recommend SBC-Yahoo DSL to friends and clients.
(11/13/05)
SBC continues to provide me with a fast, reliable DSL service. Speeds continue to be consistent (~5000 down/500 up) and no connection issues. I can't wait for Project Lightspeed to come to my neighborhood!
I will continue to recommend SBC-Yahoo DSL to friends and clients.
(6/14/06)
Earlier this spring, AT&T (SBC-Ameritech) Yahoo offered the opportunity for me to save a substantial amount of money and increase my upload speed capabilities. Although I'm always hesitant to have anyone touch my account (given the past issues), it was something I could not pass up. I signed up online and about three days later my new profile was put in place. Guess what...they didn't get it right...they didn't enter the upload side properly. I made a call to Tier 1, that was a waste of 20 minutes of my time. So I posted in the SBC (AT&T) Direct forum here at the site and waited patiently, knowing the guys and gals that work in there were swamped with similar requests. A few days later I received word to check speeds again in a few minutes and !PRESTO! everything is well again. It's for this reason I give Tech Support decent marks.
I will continue to recommend AT&T Yahoo DSL to friends and clients.
(12/2/07)
Over 7.5 years now since I picked up DSL services with Ameritech/SBC/AT&T...and the service continues to be trouble-free. I can't remember the last time it went down for any extended period, speed and latency are phenomenal and I see no reason to consider any other broadband options in my home.
AT&T has shown signs of infrastructure improvements in my neighborhood for the soon to be available U-Verse package. I'm looking forward to it.
Followup comments:  
brokenribgolfer
@cogentco.com
| ATT/SBC DSL I have had plenty of problems with this vendor. Every single time, they say it is me, and every single time it turns out to be them. Actually, when it's good it's very good. Whan it's bad, it's down, like right now. I need consistency. Unfortunately I also need statis IP's and canot get a COmcast package or I would. 
-Mark | |
|  | lordjim
Premium
join:2004-03-26
Deerfield, IL
| Re: ATT/SBC DSL Yeah well, trust me on this one, Comcast is no great shakes either, since right now I'm getting 60% packet loss and and average speed of 5 kbits/sec.
They do have so-called "permanent IPs", which for me has only changed a couple of times in the last four years. | |
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