 Review by dslwanter 
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 6.9 years, 3152 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Lowellville,Mahoning,OH
 $25 per month (12 month contract)
 about 7 days
 Ameritech
 "PPPoE Stability, No Caps, AT&T direct"
 "Unexplained sync loss which will never be solved"
 "Farewell"
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(ratings below consensus)
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***FINAL UPDATE***
Well it's been a nice ride since April of 2004 but the time has now come for me to move on. Saturday, Armstrong Cable will be here installing FTTH which connects to an omnibox on the side of my house and runs coax in.
First, to clear things up, I don't completely hate AT&T. The PPPoE stability was fantastic, the support I've gotten from AT&T Direct (Especially [user=david]) and tier 2 "ASI maintenance" was always second to none, and of course you can't beat anything "free" such as the modem provided with service.
There are many speculations about how "far" I am from the central office. You can follow the pairs straight down to the central office, street by street, with no bridge taps (or so I'm told these were cut when I first got service), and it'll come up to 2.6 miles on any given mileage counter. So, by my calculations, that should be around 13,728 feet, probably give it a few additional hundred feet to compensate for the cross box. But even with that, it shouldn't be much more than 14,000 feet. With the way ADSL technology works, that should still be within an acceptable distance and probably could go another 3 or 4,000 feet.
So what exactly is the problem? Well, I don't believe I'm "too far from the central office" like many techs thought when they came out here over the years. When they saw were I was located, they immediately assumed this and wrote the trouble ticket off as no trouble found, even when ASI techs would detect ground shorts clear as day on my line. There would be weeks at a time where I wouldn't lose sync but then there were times I've lost it several times a day. The biggest mystery is why would thunderstorms, within roughly 20 miles or so, have such a profound effect on my connection, and why just thunderstorms?
When I started the service in April of 2004, we were of course signed up for the basic package of, at the time, 384/256. It was the noticed by my line stats that my line could support upwards of about 4000-5000/800. So at that point between me and what was SBC Direct were figuring I could go to express 1536/256 (at the time, now 1536/384), or Pro 3008/512. We even tried both of those packages for a period over the years, the higher the sync rate, the more pronounced the thunderstorm problem became, for example I recall one particular time in summer of 2005 when a tornado warning was issued for Erie, PA, which is 60 miles northeast of here. A super cell thunderstorm blew off Lake Erie, yet it was perfectly clear here, I then realized my modem losing sync. And hence once the storm moved well away, the sync loss went away. So with all that said and with the need for stability with my internet radio station, I decided I can go all the way down to 384/384, just for stability purposes. And even to this day I still lose sync.
While I probably owe it to AT&T for having broadband, something better has come along and the time has come to switch. I don’t know of too many areas that have a service that provides fiber optic cable straight to the premise, so I feel kind of blessed with that. AT&T has failed to see the potential up here and has no intentions of any remote terminals nor do I see any signs of U-Verse. I know U-Verse is likely a long way away but to be honest what this township now has from Armstrong would be strong competition against it. A “racino” as they’re calling it now (racetrack/casino) is due to be under construction soon just across the PA border on US 422, which 422 runs through our township and the construction site is about 4 miles across the PA border. When all the hotels, restaurants, strip malls, water park (I here that’s one of the first things going in), gas stations, and more start to develop, maybe then AT&T will realize that if they would’ve built the infrastructure in 2008, like Armstrong did, they could’ve cashed, let alone right now when people in this township really haven’t been exposed to broadband. They’ll realize someday, and it’ll be too late, Armstrong will have the hold.
This is my last review for AT&T, expect my first review of Armstrong sometime next week.
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