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Review by jsuhr 
UPDATED: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 85 visits, last login: 333 days ago
 Olathe,Johnson,KS
 $125 per month (24 month contract)
 about 45 days
 Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
 "FAST. Fairly Inexpensive. Good value."
 "Order management, lack of service reliability."
 "Not for you if you need greater than 75% uptime."
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I ordered the service in the end of January after pulling out of SWBell DSL on the day of installation. I have a relative that's an ION tech and he told me to check it out before committing to anything else, and am I glad I did.
I'm on the xt-2 service: that's 2 phone lines with all the bells and whistles, one ADSL w/ 2 static IP addresses (6.4mbit down), and 450 minutes of long distance--all for $120 a month. My bill with SWBell for phones only was $90, sometimes more. I've also cut my dialup service ($20/month) and my MCI long distance which was usually about $20. So it definitely made sense financially.
The main low point was the order management process. I had to constantly stay on them to make sure the order was making any progress. My original install date was pushed back 2 weeks (but this could have been a lack of cooperation on the CLEC's part).
The installation was great. Techs were good, showed up right on schedule, and had it done in much less time than they said it would take. It took about 3 hours start-to-finish.
So far I've had great luck--no outages, EXTREMELY fast internet access, etc. I'll post again in a few months with an update.
**************************
Update, as of 6/06/01 (less than 3 months after installation)
I'm not quite as happy as I was after that first week of service. The weekend after it was installed it went down for 3 days, then two days later, it happened again--this pattern has yet to stop.
I've now had to lodge at least 12 trouble tickets in the 9 weeks I've had the service. The customer service is great, but that's not much of a comfort when your cell phone bills skyrocket from talking to them during an outage (the phone service goes down right alongside the internet service). 4 of the outages were over 2 days long each.
I've done everything short of serving them with a subpoena to get them to fix whatever is wrong, but I never get any real info on what the problem is.
The silver lining is that I have yet to be billed for anything (not that I would pay it anyway... I think they owe ME money for my cell time and lost advertising expenses).
Just wanted to caution anyone getting ready to embark on an ION journey--don't sign up if you can't handle an outage at least once a week.
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Review by hudsterboy
Posted: 8.4 years ago
member for 8.4 years, 20 visits, last login: 2.1 years ago
Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
$119 per month (24 month contract)
about 21 days
SBC
CLEC party: Sprint
"Fast, Friendlly installation from order to delivery"
"I can't think of any. It all went super smooth"
"They are awesome. I recommend it to everyone"
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Details:
-Sprint ION XT2
-Sprint C50 hub
-Los Feliz Area of Los Angeles
-About 8000ft to CO
-2 static IP's
-appx. Tech speed at interface: 3900down/800up
-My top speeds, so far: 2500down/700up
Still screwing around with settings, though.
This is all like a dream. I've never had so pleasant an experience in ordering ANY service from a telco.
-Early on Delivery Date!!
I ordered service on May 14th. Was gave a tentative a delivery date of June 13th. I called 2 weeks later to confirm, and the ACTUALLY gave me an earlier install date of June 5th!
-Early to Premesis
June 5th rolls around. I take the day off KNOWING that they won't show up. Not only do the show up, BUT THEY ARE 10 MIN. EARLY!!! I'm freaking out. This isn't happening.
-Even PacBell delivers!!!
We went around to the back of the house to check the line drop. It was all good!
- Mike and Cliff kick ass.
These guys were very cool and knowlegable! They knew about computers and technology. When I asked them a question, they gave me an actual answer, instead of saying "We didn't get trained for that yet. The older guys get the training first". They did the install in about 2 hours, total. All in all, super nice, professional guys!
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Review by qazwsx22
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 43 visits, last login: 6.8 years ago
Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
$119 per month (48 month contract)
about 90 days
SBC
CLEC party: Sprint
"FAST, excellent value since ION includes phone + long distance"
"poorly coordinated install, ISP relationship with Earthlink is poor"
"a damn lot better than pacbell"
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Why i picked ION -
With the xt2 package you get 2 static IP's, two VOIP phone lines, 400 minutes of LD, very good international LD rates, the ability to control your own vmail, forwarding, rings, etc.
The speed is unregulated with the xt2 or xt4 package, I'm getting around 5Mbps, try pricing that from pacbell.
The installation tech was great. He really knew his stuff (a former Fortune 500 network engineer). I got the C100 hub, which includes the battery backup, so the phones are supposed to work if the power goes out.
ION should totally work on *any* system, despite their claims of only Win 95/98 and Mac,
BUT - they do not handle the installation scheduling well. I was never sure I was going to get it. Ion uses earthlink for the bundled email address, web space, etc. The earthlink relationship sucks (but I don't really care about another email adress, etc). The ION phone control app is web-accessed and seems so-so, no major issues so far, except it is the one thing that does not work on Win2k (I have to boot 98 to manipulate phone settings). I asume this will get better with time.
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Review by themexican
UPDATED: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.8 years, 37 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
$119 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
SBC
"Great Install, good speed even though I am far from the Central Office."
"phone support is horrific"
"If you need fast DSL see if the package is worthwhile for you."
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SprintIon has recently informed me that they are cancelling service here (90039). Over the last year it has been a very fast service and I am sad to see them go. I am being paid $400 to cancel my connection. The nice thing about SprintIon was that the speed was often better than promised.
This area (Silverlake area of LA), is iffy DSL-wise and I am having a hard time finding replacement DSL service. I have ordered Earthlink (the only ISP actually willing to try offering service) and will report on my experiences when and if the service is installed.
My previous reviews are below:
------------------------------------------------
First thing to note is that the $119 charge is for 2 phone lines, DSL, vm, and long distance minutes. All this is controlled by a SprintIOn hub.
Also if you are reading this from Los Angeles, I am writing from the Silverlake area just north of the resevior (notorious for bad phone lines).
I am a recent Sprint Ion convert (just got it installed 2 days ago), so this all might go to hell, but so far my experience has been wonderful.
My house is very far from the Central Office...almost the limit according to Pacbell. And for 9 months I have been trying to get Pacbell to install DSL in my house only to be shuttled around from dept to dept. I had several install dates in which nobody showed up and was at one point charged because "my service was already installed". This has been especially hellish because the phone lines here are terrible and 33.3 is about the limit for modems. Being a web designer I was at the end of my rope. Then SprintIon sent an announcement in Dec. I had nothing to lose.
The order application process was painless. My only complaint, even though I was given an install date, nobody called on the day before the date to confirm. Otherwise it was all smooth sailing. The install was quick (about an hour), although my guys said that the short time was unusual (I already have cat-5 wire in my house). 3 to 4 hours is the norm.
Installation on my somewhat complicated Macintosh/PC network was a snap. You get 2 ip addresses so, one ethernet jack went into my router, the other into my airport hub. I set my own TCP settings in the Mac TCP control panel and email was set up through an online page at earthlink. Everything just worked after the first try. It's hard to explain how great it is to have a desktop and 2 wirelessly connected laptops cruising at high speed after 9 months of barely breaking 33.3. (airport allows the second ip address to be shared by up to 10 computers). One of the key selling points was the static IP--this allows easy setup on OS X and Linux I set up both OSes without issue...
Speeds have been very good especially considering how far I am from the Central Office, but they are nowhere near the 8Mbs SprintIon claims is possible when you have good phone lines. The fastest I have seen is about 2Mbs...average 1-1.5 which is just fine for now. When the lines in my area are upgraded to optical I should see a major speed increase.
Also I like the extra phone line and all the voice mail options. All in all I am very very happy especially since I will be saving money. (earthlink= $19/mon,pacbell local 2 lines = $60/mon, longdistance=$90/mon avg).
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UPDATE:
I've now been using SprintIon for a couple of weeks and I'm still happy as a clam with the DSL part of the service. I'm less ecstatic about the phone lines, and the support for those lines. My lines are prone to a sort of digital effect, breaks, and echos. This is not all the time--maybe twice a week, but it is enough to be annoying.
The online configuration center (again for the phones) is buggy an prone to crashes/dead periods.
The phone help is brain dead (the DSL guys know their stuff).
Finally with the rolling blackouts we've had in CA, I've realized that unlike normal phone lines, if I lose juice, I lose my phones. This is a potential source of worry.
I know this phone stuff is not standard DSLReports type info, but because it is part of the SprintIon package it is important to know.
For me fast reliable DSL service is more important than problem free phones, so I'm still recommending these guys, but if you are only a casual user, this might not be the best thing for you. Check out all the options.
Finally, I expect my phone issues are because of the poor quality of the lines in the Silverlake area of CA. This might not even be Sprint's problem.
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Update 2/18/01
I've had about a month and a half of service with Sprint...and the DSL speeds have been consistently good especially considering the poor lines. For example I have a list of good napster servers and I can often get 100-150/k sec from 2 simultaneously for a combined speed of 200-300k/down. FTPing from a fast remote computer with a T1 I often get 250/300K down.
Ping rates are still bad. I rarely get anything lower than 100ms even when I am sitting on top of the server. This is not a huge problem for me, but it might be for gamers.
As happy as I am with the DSL service, phone support is still very bad and the phone service is weird. Literally everyone at the phone center seems absolutely clueless. They don't seem to understand their own service and are especially confused when there is an earthlink issue (SprintIon email is through earthlink). I am often put in the weird position of explaining to them how their service works.
Examples of phone support problems:
-My main earthlink username was screwed up when they initially installed (there was a typo so now my main email account is my companyname with a typo). Earthlink says Sprint has to deal with this problem. Sprint says it's earthlinks problem. Still not resolved.
-I had a previous earthlink account and was told that I would be able to use my old email address (and cancel the original account). This policy is clearly stated both on the sprintion website and on all the literature. Each company say it's the other's problem and I am still paying for both earthlink and sprintion (all my business mail goes to that earthlink account). Still not resolved.
-SprintIon provides you with 5 Earthlink addresses, but the tech forgot to give me all the usernames. This is a simple problem...but once again Sprint was again clueless as was the Earthlink person they transferred me to... but then I found Earthlink live chat support and the lady there solved my problem in seconds.
Examples of weird phone service.
-Some local calls within Los Angeles now require me to dial the full number without the preceding 1, other calls in the same area code require the 1. For example I am in 323. When I dial 213 I sometimes have to dial 12135551212 whereas a another number might be 2135552222. There seems to be rhyme or reason to this.
-Sometimes people dial me and get something that sounds like an English ambulance horn.
-Sometimes I pick up the phone and get the same ambulance horn sound.
-Echoes are common.
-If I am talking on my second sprint-ion line incoming callers get a busy signal (I should first hear call waiting then If I don't answer they should get voice mail...again no help from the Sprint help center on resolving this)
-Most phone calls sound sort of digital...like a cell phone. It is a significant step down in quality from a good old fashioned line.
-The sprintion phone control center web page is buggy and seems to always be down. It crashes my browser more often than it works. This is literally the only web page that brings my computer down.
I put up with all the phone weirdness because I care more about DSL service... but if another company offered straight fast DSL service in this area and I could switch back to regular phones I would in a heartbeat.
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Update6/02/01
-DSL service continues to be excellent. The general quality of phone service has also improved (now it just sounds like a normal phone).
BUT, and it's a big but, the phone support continues to be horrific. Just this morning I called with a simple question (I asked the url of the control center, because my browser zapped my old bookmarks). The representative first gave me bad information (said the url was sprintion.com...it is not, this is just an advertising page), and then put me on hold for 47 minutes!
Every single call I have made to the help desk over the last several months has been just as frustrating. Many of my email issues, for example, simple never got resolved. Even though I am supposed to have several email addresses with ion, I resorted to giving my family hotmail accounts out of frustration.
SprintIon recently sent me a $10 gift certificate as way of apology for it's growing pains. That money would have been better spent hiring people who know what they are talking about.
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Review by DBryant
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 5 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
Overland Park,Johnson,KS
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 45 days
Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Sprint
"Integrated DSL; local phone; long distance; voice mail; call forwarding; caller ID"
"Eerily none!"
"Slick on-line order; thorough on-line follow-up;fast installation;great voice and speed"
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Entire experience was positive. Just lucky?
Regardless, ordered ION xT1 on-line 45 days ago. On-line order was process was easy and efficient. Received periodic e-mail follow-ups. Day before received phone reminder of appointment.
Install took 2-hours.
$99 gets DSL, local phone service (so long SWBT) 200 minutes long distance, call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, voice mail. All phone services managed via easy to use on-line system. Static IP.
Consistently averaging 2+MB down and 500+KB up
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Review by oldnick
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 9.1 years, 292 visits, last login: 1.1 years ago
Garland,Dallas,TX
 Business customer
$149 per month (12 month contract)
Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Sprint
"Great Speed. 2 static IPs. ummm... speed."
"took a long time to install (approx 6-8 weeks)."
"cheaper than a T1 but hella faster!"
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The $149/mo pricetag includes 2 data lines and 4 voice lines and 750minutes of long distance. We got 2 static IP's. We hooked up the first machine and ran several speed tests. The average was around 5200kbps downstream and 500kbps upstream.
I used to work for a CLEC so I know what a helluva time they have getting their installs pushed thru the ILECs...
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Review by sosuede
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
Los Angeles,Los Angeles,CA
$120 per month
about 120 days
SBC
CLEC party: Sprint
"Surprising voice quality, Good speed"
"But not great speed, poor ping"
"Satisied thus far"
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Waiting for the install was painful. Took 4 months and calling customer service was a remarkably frustrating experience.
When it finally came, install was totally professional, efficient and friendly. During the install, 2 more senior guys from Sprint came by to see how everything was going.
After reading all the horror stories, I've been shocked with the excellent quality of the voice lines. No echo. Sounds just as good as my old PacBell line, or at least close enough.
Speed has been good, though far from what was advertised. PC Pitstop usually puts me between 1.5-2 mps. The technician tested the line at 4.5 mps. Everything in Windows has been tweaked, etc, so I don't know what gives. I'm 7500 feet from the Hollywood CO.
Pings stink. I'm getting sick of being blasted to smithereens.
In closing, it feels great to send no money to Pac Bell.
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Review by 123abc1
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 100 visits, last login: 5.2 years ago
Escondido,San Diego,CA
$99 per month (12 month contract)
about 180 days
SBC
CLEC party: Sprint
"Great Speed! Great Price!"
"Everything Else!"
"Wasn't worth the hassle! I'm going to keep my PACBELL DSL!"
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Well I ordered the Sprint ION XT2 in NOV of 2000.
Sprint made no contact! I called in late December! Everything was good to go for install in Jan. Loop qual had passed with great speed readings.
Jan came and went with out an install.
10 calls later to the ION group... Feb came and went no install!
On April I placed a second order online. This time I gave them a telephone number I had installed just for ION to get thing going for them. I was given a due date of May 11. PacBell came and did their thing in 5 days and taged my line as DSL ready! Yup just 5 days!
I think the problem with my first order was that I already had DSL on the # that I gave them. BUT I made it very clear to everyone involved that this was the case. My sales man and order manager never thought it to be an issue. Oh! wait for my first order I had an original install date in march but when the ION techs came out they found that the loop had not been delivered. So they went home!
May 10th!
I had the day off so I called to verify my install for may 11th! They said everything was ready to go. That a tech would show up in the morning by 8am for install of the data and voice piece!
May 11th!
No tech shows up. It's 10am I call ION press the option for dispatch. I'm not in their system! They transfer me to the order management group! Oh! you are not schedule for install today, is what I'm told! The rep was good in trying his best. He told me he would get a tech out to do the data but that the voice postponed until next week. I said it was fine. The tech came and did his thing. He was new so it took him 4hours to do a job that could have been done is less than half the time. When he left I was surfing at the same speed that I was before with my 1.5Mbps Pacbell DSL. I was fine with that because I had used his SunRise meter to check the line while he was out in his van and saw that I was getting 5Mbps down and 600Kbps Up. I figured I would run the Tweet test on here and get it going later.
6pm same day.
PacBell disconnects my voice line and I'm left without dial tone! I called technical support and yelled at them for again not getting their due dates right! Since I work for pacbell I called them and they told me that ION had not called to postpone the portout process.
I went ahead and did the self port process. I got dial tone again and was able to call out but eveyone that called me got a disconnect recording. This was friday night I didn't get anyone to look at my problem until Tue when it was finally taken care of.
As of today I have had no outages, and everything is going well. For somereason the control center does not work very well and It is difficult to modify my services.
I love the speed, which I already most of with my Pacbell DSL. I love the price but It WAS NOT WORTH WHAT I WENT THROUGH. I KNOW FROM DSLREPORT NOT TO COUNT ON the voice so I still have and will keep my PacBell Line with DSL which is used by my roommate.
I'll keep you up to date if there are any changes...
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Review by r_finley
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.5 years, 3 visits, last login: 8.5 years ago
San Diego,San Diego,CA
Contract price not specified. (12 month contract)
SBC
CLEC party: SBC
"speed, bang for the buck overall."
"no 24-7 tech support? Actually they do. But, only denizens of this board seem to know it."
"You might experience voice outages as this is Voice over IP."
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I am writing my review as I am no longer mad at them. So, here is the story...
10PM on a Saturday nigth. I tried calling my home to check messages on that number. Instead, I get a fast busy signal. Ok, parked car in garage. Noticed red diag light blinking on C100 Sprint Ion Hub. Pick up phone. High-Low tones on phone. Pressing
"reset" on the hub near the voice jacks won't solve the problem.
I had no phone service from saturday afternoon to sunday around noon.
I had to grab the SprintPCS phone from the car. That still worked. What aggravated my ire was the inability to find the 24 hour tech support phone number. No one at 1-800-pindrop knew it. 1-8SP-RINTION was on a recording until monday with no useful information for existing customers. No one could help at the local SprintPCS office where I signed up for Ion. Their phone numbers were on recordings too. Even their display PC for ion was wedged hard.
It is going to take some effort and care to avoid these outages. I cannot expect it to be perfect as the technology is relatively new and they are very much at the mercy of the incumbent from which they lease the loop wiring from.
Just wish they had given me a sticker with the 24 hour phone number.
Their equipment does generate a trouble ticket on their end when the modem loses sync with the switching office. They called me a few hours after service was restored to make sure it came back up.
You can't beat the price for a static IP, long distance and 2 voice lines. Not even my cable company can match them on speed and network consistency.
I haven't set it up yet. But, their free voicemail might answer the phone when a power blackout knocks out my answering machine.
(but then my cats wouldn't have anything to clear messages from while walking on it)
Who knows...
Wish list: to be able to merge the phone number between my cellphone and a voice line on the Ion service so both phones will ring with one number.
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Review by mdharm
Posted: 8.5 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 1613 visits, last login: 217 days ago
San Diego,San Diego,CA
$119 per month
about 38 days
SBC
CLEC party: Sprint
"Good, professional installation."
"Long lead time and difficulty "qualifying""
"Good value for money"
| Pre Sales information:
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Well, my SprintION installation is complete. Here's the story of how the day went, and some interesting good and bad points of the process.
I first became seriously interested in ION when I purchased a house in Febuary 2001. At the time, SprintION had just switched to using a "LoopCheck" client which uses the PC modem to test the line quality. I failed that test multiple times. As a response, I began re-wiring phone jacks in my house (they were in terrible shape), and after that I was able to qualify. I also managed to get the assistance of a DSLR user who is also an ION employee. Many thanks to him for all his assistance (you know who you are)!
I placed the order on 2 April 2001. The order process was quite lengthy, as there are several options and regulatory issues that need to be overcome. At the end, I was issued a 6-digit order number, and told my installation would be on 17 or 18 May 2001. All told, it was probably a 25 minute phone call. I was a bit disappointed at the lead time, but figured it would be worth the wait.
I ordered the xt2 service, which was listed as having one static IP and two phone lines for $119. Excellent deal, if you add up the cost of those things separately. At least, it is in this area. You should check pricing where you are locally to be certain.
After a couple of rolling blackouts here in CA, I decided to call back and order a battery-backup unit for my order. To my dismay, I found I couldn't "add" that to my order -- it would have to be canceled and re-entered from scratch. However, I was told the installers could sell me the unit on installation day -- that turned out to be 100% correct.
After some gentle prodding and some help from my inside friend, my install date was moved up to 10 May 2001. Installation was not as smooth as I would have hoped, but it could have been much worse. All in all, I'm pleased.
The first installation issue was that the folks at the 1-8-SPRINT-ION number couldn't tell me what time the installers would be showing up. It turned out that they called me about 1 hour before they came out, which was better than nothing. However, a little more warning on the time window would have been good.
At the appointed time (8:15 AM), two guys showed up, each with their own van. Both vans had Sprint logos on them, and both men were wearing Sprint polo shirts. However, I discovered that they are actually GEtronics contractors. Not significant, but interesting.
They opened up the NID and found where the ILEC (PacBell, in this case) had run the loop. I had an unused pair of copper from the street, so all was well. I spoke with them for a few minutes about the type of setup I wanted -- I have 6 pairs of copper in my walls, and I wanted them to use my third pair to run the ADSL signal into my office, and located the IAD there, and then connect the POTS output from the IAD back onto my first and second pairs (for xt2 service). There was some confusion at first, mostly caused by terminology. After about 5 minutes, we were all on the same page in terms of the plan.
At this point, we all went inside. Interestingly enough, they put surgical booties (think shower caps) on their shoes. I imagine that this was to reduce dirt being tracked in -- I didn't care, but it was a nice thing to see.
I began signing forms. I only had to sign 3-4 things, including the TOS and consent to move my Local, Local Toll, and Long Distance service to them. I got, for my trouble, a hard-shell CD carrying case with capacity for about 22 CDs. Nice touch, if you're in to those sorts of things.
Meanwhile, work was beginning. In my office, they had already removed the wall jack (an old-style round wallplate) and began testing the wire. Testing the wire from the NID to the IAD involved testing the resistance of the loop as well as the resistance of the individual wires. Both were fine, so they starting putting up a biscut jack.
I was a bit disappointed that they weren't prepared to install a flush-mounted jack, especially since the round hole is a bit larger than the biscut is wide, so there is a little bit of hole exposed. Nothing serious -- I don't even think you could get a pencil in there, but if you tend to throw paperclips at your wall, you might be concerned.
The biscut jack had 4 jacks on it. One was the ADSL signal, and the second was the 2-line jack that the IAD would tie to. The other two were my "Line 1" and "Line 2" jacks so I could place two phones in the office. The biscut was attached to my wall with double-stick foam tape and drywall screws. All in all, not bad.
The IAD was connected, and got sync in about 3 minutes (or less). The installers indicated to me that the IAD will re-download it's programming every 20 minutes starting at 3 minutes past the hour (:03, :23, and :43). During this time, the indicator lights will blink red, but functionality will be maintained. I'm glad they mentioned that, as I'm the type of person would would notice such a thing and get worried.
Once we had sync, we set up for data. We hooked up my laptop and set the networking parameters. Actually, they did that, as they were testing out several new procedures (they had two big binders of documents with them) and wanted to see how they worked. I would say, at least for this part, they worked flawlessly. A reboot later, and I was surfing the web. A quick download and another reboot, and I nearly doubled my PC download speed with an RWIN tweak. They actually downaloaded a .reg file and updated my registry the sane way (i.e. not manually). Kudos to the person who developed that procedure.
Next, we turned our attention to voice. At this point, I still had my ILEC line running, as the IAD POTS ports had not been connected to anything. We checked for dialtone on the ports, and it sounded good. So they went to the NID and severed the connection to the ILEC and we patched the IAD into my wall wiring.
Now, they tested. They had a checklist of test calls to make and receive. These included PCS to ION, ION to PCS, ILEC to ION, ION to ILEC, ION to ION, ION to Service Center, etc. My new line (remember, this was xt2) worked flawlessly the first time. All outgoing test calls worked, and all incoming test calls worked.
My ported line was a different story. Outbound calls worked, but inbound calls didn't. Calling from an ILEC line produced a busy signal. Calling from a PCS produced an "Error 70". They got on the phone with their support people (both were carrying PCS phones) and, after some waiting, managed to resolve the call routing issue.
Meanwhile, they turned their attention to getting my Earthlink e-mail set up and showing me the control center. Since I don't use a Windows-based e-mail program, they just gave me the necessary info (server names, account names, passwords, etc.) and I did my thing. However, when we went to pull up the control center, we were unable to modify my services. That is, we could log in and change my info and password, but attempting to access the service controls produced an error reporting that no "DN" information was found for my ID. They called that one in, also.
An hour passes. During this time, the incoming call problem on my primary line is fixed. However, the control center is not. The installers tell me that their procedure is to stay for an hour to try to debug, but then to just open a trouble ticket and leave.
At this point, two more guys in another truck show up. Apparently, they needed to sign off on the work before the job could be considered completed. To me, it was just a delay. Eventually, I signed off on their work and they were on their way. Interestingly enough, they use laptops with wireless internet access to communicate with their database in the field. Nice setup.
So, now the summary of the good and the bad:
The good
Voice and data work!
The wiring job was clean and straight forward.
Installers were friendly and polite and willing to talk about their work
The installers were willing to talk to me about how I wanted this installed
The installers didn't install the Earthlink software -- I was half expecting them to fight me on this issue, but they were very cool about it.
The bad
Control center didn't work
4 guys and 3 trucks!?!?
Lots of "new procedures" -- these guys were experienced telecom installers, but these new procedures made them look a little foolish
Problems 7-digit dialing some local numbers
The C100 was not available
The battery backup for the C50 was an off-the-shelf Minuteman Pro 500VA UPS. The people on the phone and web site give the impression that it's something more integrated with the IAD. I'm just hoping this thing doesn't have some godawful alarm when the power dies, and $99 for 500VA isn't totally out of line.
Total time for the process was about 4.5 hours. It would have been less (closer to 3) if the two issues (incoming calls and control center) hadn't come up.
The problem with 7-digit dialing came up after they left. Some numbers work, some don't. I suspect that there is some difference in the numbers I'm calling which accounts for this, but it should still be fixed. I'm going to open a trouble ticket after my control center issues are resolved. Interestingly, 10-digit dialing works, even for local numbers, very much like my cellular phone. So this isn't a really big issue.
Another odd thing I noticed is that my dialtone has a lower volume than it did before. Not a problem, because my old one was quite loud. But a difference that I noticed almost immediately.
One final oddity: According to my installers, I've been issued two static IP address. They even gave me both. I signed up at a time when xt2 only came with 1 static IP. Odd, but I'm not complaining....
Speeds at the PC are about 1.2Mbps download (2.4Mbps with RWIN tweak), and about 450Kbps upload. The line itself runs much faster, but some of that speed is used by the voice lines. I'm pinging at about 110ms to the east coast and 60ms to the west coast (according to DSLR tests). Ping test results are available at »/quality/nil/407600
So, that about covers it. Things are actually running along quite nicely. We'll see how the system behaves over time.
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