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Review by jochumr1 See Profile

  • Location: Orange, Orange, CA, USA
  • Cost: $75 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 11 days
  • No Cap
  • Telco party AT&T
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

AT&T Internet 1000

Set and Installation took 4 hours

Arris BGW210-700 Modem/Router

Fairly easy process other then it took 11 to get set up (blame Covid)

member for 23 years, 1477 visits, last login: 3.2 years ago
lodged 3.2 years ago







Review by dmxrob See Profile

  • Location: Boonville, Cooper, MO, USA
  • Cost: $52 per month (12 month contract)
  • Telco party Southwestern Bell
Not really anything anymore
Line Techs who won't do their job, Takes Months to Fix Problems (if they ever fix them)
When things go wrong, and they will, get ready for a headache!
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

My Other Reviews

·Charter
·StarLink
·Suddenlink
After almost 4 months of terrible DSL service, static-laden voice service and probably 10 service calls, a new line ran from the splice pedestal to my house and countless tweeks to the NID and my wiring I've learned...

* Remember the old days when voice service outages received a 24-hour response? Forget about it. It's ancient history here in Missouri. AT&T technician told me they got rid of this in 2007. No dialtone? Better hope you don't have to call 911 because it might be a week before they fix it.

* What few remaining AT&T line techs that are left are overworked and under pressure to do more with less. Out of the 6 techs who worked in this town in the past, there is only one guy left. AT&T could care less about customer service -- it's all about how many folks they can layoff to make this quarter's numbers.

* If you have a problem with your voice service, forget about talking to anyone in America. Be prepared to talk to someone who doesn't understand english from god knows where who doesn't understand basic telephone terminology.

* If your DSL problem is sporadic forget about getting it fixed. Better hope half the town goes down or you aren't going to get anything solved. Bad port? Good luck getting that switched over.

* Be prepared to talk to tier 1 technicians who (if you are lucky they are American) just want you off the phone. Their solution to every problem is to "unplug the modem".

* Tier 2 support is better, but they have their hands tied. DSL Tier 2 will throw you over to voice telco support just to get you off the phone. The voice folks can't see anything to do with DSL stuff.

* Need a new line run to your NID box? Start praying. They will send out a contractor who will tear your yard up and do the crappiest job they can. Then that "new line" will lay by your NID for at least 3 weeks before anyone bothers to come out and hook it up.

* Want a refund for service interruptions? Don't expect it automatically -- no matter if your service was down for a month straight. Call up the non-english speaking support again and once they send you to the wrong department pray you get someone who understands and sends you to the right department. If you DO get lucky and DO get sent to the right department they will take care of you -- because they understand what a crappy company AT&T has turned into. The stories I heard from the American-based support folks who had been with the company for years was just horrifying.

* Oh, and don't forget the non-english speaking support folks will be on some 300bps VOIP connection that doesn't work and then take an attitude because you ask him to speak up or speak english.

In a nutshell, it has been 4 months of pure living hell getting our DSL and voice line fixed. Thank goodness for the few folks, including the wonderful line tech (who even gave me his own cell phone number so I could call him directly and bypass support) who still care. AT&T corporate could care less -- they want your money and nothing else.

Ma Bell must be rolling over in her grave.

*** Update as of 1-1-2011 ***

After AT&T finally came and buried a new line last fall, and then did some work in the junction box, we have been stable for the past 6 months. We rarely disconnect and even during weather events things seem stable. It appears that the bad line was the culprit all along.

It's a shame I had to go through such frustration to get things fixed. I did eventually get a $150 credit from AT&T after talking to some U.S.-based folks in their billing department.

*** Update as of 9-6-2011 ***

Two months ago everything went haywire again. This time I had severe static on the phone line as well. Numerous tech visits (at least 7) and no solution yet. They even sent out a retired premise tech who did a good job of updating some older wiring in the house, but didn't solve the problem. Voice people say call DSL people; DSL people say call voice people.

One tech suggested I upgrade to the new IPDSLAM service being branded as "U-verse HSI". So they will be here on Sept 8 to do that.

Very disappointed, but as AT&T is the only game in town will have to just keep playing this game. So far have received about $70 in bill credits (but not until having to threaten to cancel).

** Update 10-7-2012 **
Over a year of unreliable connections. AT&T Corporate got involved. They could not get local field folks to do their job. If corporate can't get their own folks to do their job, what chance do we have of getting them to do anything? They would just close tickets without ever showing up.

** Update 7-8-2014 **
Switched over to IP-DSL Uverse in 2012. Issues with bonding were causing a lot of the original problems, and new ground wires and bonding of pedestals took place after many, many, many calls to AT&T. Getting a pretty steady, reliable 12mbps service now for about 2 years.

** Update 12-20-2020 **
Dropped AT&T in the spring of 2020 because they were no longer investing in area. Stuck at 12mbps speeds. Towards the end it was becoming so unreliable. Their uplink was saturated and they had zero interest in fixing it. Would never recommend to anyone.


member for 18.7 years, 1318 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 3.2 years ago


Review by jricky See Profile

  • Location: Miami, Miami-Dade, FL, USA
  • Cost: $60 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 10 days
  • Caps of 1024 gigabytes/month
Installation
Speed
Not worth it
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

bad experience

member for 3.8 years, 2 visits, last login: 3.8 years ago
lodged 3.8 years ago







Review by FSSbrett See Profile

  • Location: Desoto, Dallas, TX, USA
  • Cost: $95 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 18 days
  • Telco party AT&T
Good back up technology and price.
Technical support has limited hours and higher tier support too slow to follow up
Good for technical home office user needing Internet back up capability.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

Internet backup at $80.00 per month before taxes, etc.

Order and install process was very easy.

The WAN modem is Arris NVG589. The data backup modem is DataRemote CDS-9010, hanging off the Arris.

I switched from Time Warner Spectrum due to numerous outages, some muti-day.

AT&Ts Internet backup works well, providing a cellular service if the WAN line goes down. In tests and actual outages (a couple) the Internet and VPN either stayed up or I could recover once the cellular service kicked in.

Not happy that support is limited in time, WAN 8-18 US Central, Internet backup 8-16 US Eastern, M-F, and they don't call back promptly, takes a day or more. But, have only needed some RFO and similar info that doesn't affect my production. Still chasing them on how to get printing over the wifi while on corporate VPN, off VPN can print. No admin access to the Internet backup modem (my job is for a major carrier's 3rd line business support). Admin access for the WAN modem.

member for 4.2 years, 341 visits, last login: 2.7 years ago
updated 4.2 years ago


Review by BoulderHill1 See Profile

  • Location: Montgomery, Kendall, IL, USA
  • Cost: $34 per month
  • Telco party AT&T
Excellent connection
IMO no bad points
always works
Pre Sales information:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:

Update 3-22-2015

So close to two months now on the UVERSE and all is great!

There was an issue with the billing that resulted in a bonus for me.

I figured it would take a bill cycle for some things to adjust properly because of the switch and dropping the home phone. But after the second bill arrived it was still not right. The bill reflected my cellular plan (as it should) and my home phone which had been disconnected. It did not show the UVERSE plan or the old DSL account.

So basically I was being charge for a service that I wasn't getting and not being charged for the service I was getting.

I made a call to the billing customer support to inform them of the error and to get it resolved.

Samantha took my call and quickly worked to fix the problem. She issued credit for payments I made on the defunct plans and also credits on the new UVERSE for the current month. She indicated I would be receiving a final bill statement for the home phone and DSL which were terminated showing zero balance.

While she had me on the phone she also informed me she was able to get me on an even better pricing plan for the UVERSE lowering the cost from $34 to $28.50 and said she bumped the speed up as well. She didn't say what she had bumped it up to, I just thanked her for doing so. I hadn't even asked for this. I was on the 6meg plan and when I had the chance I ran speed test on the line and found that I was now getting in excess of 23meg download speed.

******************************************************
Update 3-1-2015

Made the switch from DSL to UVERSE internet last month. Works great.

I have refrained from going to Uverse for a long time because it seemed that many in my area that had Uverse had problems with it. They also had it with TV service and I am going with internet only so that may make a difference.

I made the switch purely for pricing reasons. I had been on the 6meg DSL plan that had recently had a price increase to close to $40/month. In addition I was also paying for a home phone line at about $25/month. I did not use this home line for any calls whatsoever. The only reason I had it was so that I could have the DSL line since the DSL service was dependent on the dial tone or a live POTS line to work. So in reality my internet bill had creeped up to $65/month since I had to pay both the DSL bill and the phone bill in order to have internet.

I had spoke with the customer service department and asked for some sort of options to lower the bill. I have done this in the past and be able to negotiate some sort of promotional price on both the phone and DSL services that would keep the price at an acceptable level. This time I was unable to. It seems that AT&T is really making an effort to phase out the DSL and no longer would offer any promotional rate.

Since I didn't really need the home phone line and only wanted internet service, it was offered to switch to uverse. They were able to provide the same 6meg service on Uverse for $34/month. So I eliminated the phone bill and reduced the internet bill making my total monthly cost almost half of what it was while still maintaining the service I want.

In addition I found an increase in speed as well. My old 6meg DSL service would typically test out at around 5meg down and 786k up. This new 6meg Uverse line consistently tests at over 7meg down and close to 2meg up, so I have an improvement there.

There was no charge for install or the new gateway device that was needed.
()()())()(UPDATE 9-2-13)()()()()()

Still on the AT&T DSL ELITE plan. Now paying less then last review. $27 per month for 6meg down ELITE service.

AT&T DSL just simply works!

As stated in previous reviews I would experience some issues in spring each year when the rainy season is here. This finally got resolved this year. A new drop was buried to my house from the pedestal. It was original and about 40 years old. Somehow it had deteriorated to the point that wet ground would affect the performance. All is well now.

I am just very pleased with the DSL service from the beginning in 2004. It has just always worked and worked well. Still using the original Speedstream modem supplied to me. Barring some network maintenance or other issue which has been slim to minimal in 9 years there has been no outages or other issues to be concerned with.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

******UPDATE 7-10-11*********
I changed to the ELITE 6meg plan a few months ago.
I had it before but scaled back due to price at the time. I negotiated with the CSR and get the ELITE at $30 a month.
For the most part it still works great. There has been however some glitches. Typically each year in the spring I experience alot of random disconnects and issues maintaining constant speed. This happens when it is very wet with rain and windy as it often is in the spring around here. When the rain stops and it dries up then the service is solid again. But as soon as it starts raining the problem comes right back. It is now july as I write this and we haven't had any signifigant rain in some time and the service has been great.

I don't know what the problem is and have called service several times this year. The problem affects the phone line as well. When the rain comes there is alot of static on the line. Of course this is what affects the DSL signal. In my neighbor hood the lines are all underground so I presume the issue must be outside the neighborhood.
*******************************************
I have had the AT&T dsl for four plus years. In this time there were two evenings that the service did not work due to some regional work being done. Otherwise it has always been there. Started out with the basic pakage up to 1.5m for a year. Toward the end of the year I was contacted by AT&T stating that my term was almost done and that they could now offer me a faster speed for 2 dollars less per month and did I want to take advantage. Well of course. Toward the end of the second year again same kind of contact from AT&T. This time they could double my speed (up to 6m) for the same price I was currently paying. Of course I opted to take this offer and have been getting this same service since. Always pleased with the service from AT&T,SBC, IL bell, whatever is their name. You can always pick up the phone and know it will work, you can always go online and know you will access the net.

9/22/09 Still with ATT dsl. Simply put it works. Sometime ago they introduced a new pricing structure. 20$,25$,30$ or 35$ a month. no contract. I am on the 30$ a month plan which is 3meg down. Tests average 2.6 down. It's ok with me. My kids youtube lile mad and I NEVER have a problem with my connection.

8/19/10*****************************
Still with AT&T DSL. Price has gone up three bucks across the board. Still on the pro plan for 3megs down. It works and works well. I cann not recall having an outage or other failure in this past year. Kids still youtube like crazy and I have added a ROKU for streaming Netflix. All works excellent.

member for 19.6 years, 3978 visits, last login: 176 days ago
updated 8.9 years ago


Bonzoix
@sbcglobal.net

Bonzoix

Anon

6.0 on elite... what a joke

I changed my service to Elite over a week and a half ago and it is still plodding along at 2.4 down and 38KB up. Not what I'm paying for at all. I am trying to call tech support, but the line is always busy.

I hate getting screwed.

LKF
@sbcglobal.net

LKF

Anon

AT&T Internet Service

Being charged extra for streaming NETFLIX .
I'm going over the Allowed amount of usage???
Is there something else out there or are all providers doing this?
BoulderHill1
join:2004-07-15
Montgomery, IL

BoulderHill1

Member

Re: AT&T Internet Service

What!?
Are you saying that you get an additional charge on your bill for Netflix streaming?

AT&T does have caps for allowed usage as many providers do.

I stream Netflix on my AT&T connection and have never been charged extra for doing so or been notified that I went over a limit. I stream quite a bit in my opinion.

Netflix does allow you to choose from three different streaming feeds to help control your bandwidth usage. It is found under your account page at Netflix site.

Review by smogrady See Profile

  • Location: Chicago, Cook, IL, USA
  • Cost: $52 per month
  • Install: about 12 days
  • No Cap
  • Telco party AT&T
Straight forward install,
The DSL speeds were lackluster in my neighborhood, so i eventually migrated to U-Verse
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

My Other Reviews

·Astound
·AT&T U-Verse
12/2014:
Upgraded to AT&T u-verse, 12mbps download.

8/31/09:
AT&T HSI EXPRESS is $25/month. Still not all that fast, but it still keeps on working. Have to power cycle the modem every few months, but it is an original 5100!

05/29/07:
Moved to a new CO/phone number. Can only get 1.5 mbit, no more 3mbit. I guess that is the cost of buying your own home! The first speed test yielded 1.26 down/316 up. Took a while to sync up (>day) but it eventually hooked up and here I am.

02/27/2007:
Connection flaked for a few hours. Tech was at d-MARC today, that may have had something to do with it. Power-cycled modem & router. All is back to normal.

07/11/2006 (new price to go live 7/17/06):
Renewed via phone. They offered $19.99/month for 12 more months. Hell it's cheaper than the $37.00 "regular price" that I've been paying for the last two months. The service continues to be solid, rarely dropping the connection.

04/01/2006:
The connection flaked out once or twice this year. Apparently the whole north-side had problems. The speed is almost always in the 2.5mBit/430K range. Can't beat the price.

03/23/2005:
We Moved recently. The "live date" was supposed to be 3/18/05, but DSL support couldn't figure out why it wouldn't come live. I posted a "help" request in the SBC Direct forum and the next day the DSL was live. It may have the help here or the eventual help from SBC. It's live & it's fast. I'm still not sure if it's the regular or Pro package. (I ordered one, got confirmed on the Regular, and the speed matches the pro. I guess I'll wait until I get the bill)

2/18/2004:
So now I'm at 1.27 MB down/213 K upload. I have to admit i'm quite satisfied and have rebooted the router once when the connection went out. Not Bad!

07/05/2003:
So far all is good. I ordered a service cut over for a move. The new number w/ DSL was to go live June 16, 2003. I didn't un-pack my computer until the weekend, got the Speedstream 5100 box on June 23 or 24, 2003. I plugged in the modem to the jack Wednesday night, connected the computer Thursday, set-up a connection and it worked immediately. I ordered a 384/128, I got 301/108 on my first speed test. No bad so far

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member for 20.7 years, 246 visits, last login: 80 days ago
updated 9 years ago


AMP144
@xo.net

AMP144

Anon

Ameritech

As I understand it, that price is only good if you have the full phone service with them. If not it is $49/month. (Not much of a deal considering what they charge for phone)

Review by CompTech210 See Profile

  • Location: San Antonio, Bexar, TX, USA
  • Cost: $65 per month
  • Install: about 15 days
  • Caps of 150 gigabytes/month
  • Telco party AT&T
Zero Downtime
Number Porting Nightmare on TWC's side not wanting to give up the number.
Its great all around once its hooked up properly,
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

We have had ATT, then U-Verse, TWC, Now back to POTS ATT/DSL

Since getting everything straight on the number port from TWC back to ATT which was a nightmare in itself. (And as a side note TWC will take their sweet time releasing a number from their grasps).
When we were initially reinstalled we grabbed the Combo POTS/DSL Pro deal for 60. Which was great but i noticed that my line could sync up to 9990 max attainable and with one quick post over in the direct forum we were able to call in and get upgraded to Elite for five dollars more a month.

Overall i couldn't be happier with the pricing and how everything just works.
In the few but purely random power outages we have had here in NE SATX my battery backup has kept my network/WLAN running the whole time with no noticeable disconnects.

Current Equipment: currently I am using a Motorola 2210 Modem hooked to a Netgear WNDR3700v3 and i'm having the NETGEAR handle all routing/firewall duties for the time being.

As of August 2014 we moved back to uverse as the 45Mbps package became available at my address and they had finally fixed the lines in my area to at least be able to handle the MAXX 45 internet speeds.

member for 15.5 years, 2346 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 9 years ago


biotech
@66.249.113.x

biotech

Anon

AT&T POTS?

So you switched from TWC(soon to be "Mother" Comcast) to Ma Bell. You've said that you used to have U-Verse. If you were using U-Verse before provided that you haven't moved from your location in San Antonio, why are you using DSL now along with AT&T Texas's local exchange service?

CompTech210
join:2008-09-14
College Station, TX

CompTech210

Member

Re: AT&T POTS?

Due to a wiring issue in the neighborhood years ago u-verse wasn't living up to its expectations. TWC ended up being alright but the constant rate hikes and downtime was too much to handle when outages were frequent.
Im now using their older ADSL and POTS due to it doesn't go down like TWC used to and stays up even when the power goes offline also. Reliability is key for me and what i do for a living.

biotech
@66.249.113.x

biotech

Anon

Re: AT&T POTS?

How did you even do it though because I thought that once you had U-Verse in your area, you can't move back to the old DSL service anymore

CompTech210
join:2008-09-14
College Station, TX

CompTech210

Member

Re: AT&T POTS?

I just called up sales and inquired about any regular phone and dsl deals. My area has U-Verse and ADSL both available. SA will most likely be one of the last AT&T areas to be force migrated to u-verse for various reasons. They are now sorting out the wiring issue in my area as to why U-Verse is available but has issues keeping a signal.
cmarslett
join:2006-11-22
Pflugerville, TX

cmarslett

Member

Re: AT&T POTS?

I wish we had the same options here in Pflugerville. They eliminated DSL support here and thus forced us to U-verse (and we never got a connection, not one time). So we had to drop AT&T and go with Clear. Not as reliable, and slower downloads (though faster uploads).

CompTech210
join:2008-09-14
College Station, TX

CompTech210

Member

Re: AT&T POTS?

Reach-out to David See Profile and he should be able to help get the ball rolling to get you connected somehow. Anytime i have had issues with connection or support issues he got the roadblocks cleared and everything working properly.

chasm
@clearwire-wmx.net

chasm

Anon

Re: AT&T POTS?

Thanks, I'll try once more. There do seem to be some (at least one) ADSL subscriber left in the neighborhood. So it shouldn't be a hopeless quest.
TBBroadband
join:2012-10-26
Fremont, OH

TBBroadband to CompTech210

Member

to CompTech210
Once U-Verse is available and fully up and running to migrate customers over to it- you will be forced to switch unless you find a 3rd party ISP to keep your aDSL as aDSL is being moved over to IP-DSL or U-Verse DSL. You're area will be sooner than you think.

tigerpaw509
join:2011-01-19

tigerpaw509 to biotech

Member

to biotech
In Illinois the company has been pushing dial tone onto dry loop customers for no charge.

biotech
@sbcglobal.net

biotech

Anon

Re: AT&T POTS?

....If Illinois's PUC still have control over the ILEC(A.K.A AT&T Illinois formerly Illinois Bell), they may require that they provide dial tone to all people that have a connection to the CO or RT regardless if customers have cancelled their landline service (which I really don't get). Frankly, I think Illinois requires them to put out a soft dial tone.

Review by wrad See Profile

  • Location: Jensen Beach, Martin, FL, USA
  • Business customer Business customer
  • Cost: $40 per month (12 month contract)
  • Install: about 14 days
Connection & Tech Support
Billing & Pre-Sales
Wish it was available at my residence.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

AT&T refused to establish an account on-line, and said their local store must do it. Sales-person knew nothing about DSL accounts. Neither did his boss. Additionally, nothing boss said was true. Six months passed before the billing matched the contract. Telephone support for billing was agreeable, but they continued to make the same error month after month. Argument was over leasing the gateway & telephone filters. Did not have telephone service, and bought the Gateway from AT&T.

Connection reliability was stellar. One brief outage during business hours in twelve-months. Never had a Skype failure. Comca$t was nine times as fast, but needed to be reconnected to Skype at least once during every prolonged conversation.

Closed the store after a year; called to terminate during the final week. They said, "OK!"

member for 20.5 years, 318 visits, last login: 6.2 years ago
lodged 9.1 years ago


Review by OKCAPLUMB See Profile

  • Location: Guthrie, Logan, OK, USA
  • Cost: $356 per month (36 month contract)
  • Install: about 74 days
  • Telco party AT&T
For a rural business, this is about as good as it gets
Ordering from AT&T Legacy (I didn't know there was such a thing) then coordinating with the local telco
Overall very positive, but did take some kicking and screaming to go live
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

My Other Reviews

·AT&T U-Verse
I received an offer from AT&T for a T1 for my office for $356 per month so I jumped on it. I've been using satellite and cellular for the past eight years with no major complaints other than the usual data caps, but those were manageable. My net cost once I scaled everything back in my office came to about $100 more per month for unlimited Internet that I could use for anything I needed. Ordering was a big confusing mess. I found out later from the telephone man that I ordered from AT&T Legacy. I didn't know there was such a thing these days with them being "the telephone company" in all fifty states. As it stands, the local telco views the legacy company as a customer or third party reseller, which explains why it took an act of congress to get everything pushed across to the telephone guys. Once we did have the order pulled across, the telco guys had the line built and up in three days. We had one hiccup since the service was new, but the telco quickly ironed out the kinks and had me back up and running pretty fast for a rural business. I was most impressed with the telephone call I received during my hiccup asking if my Internet was working. They knew I had a problem before I did. Overall, I have no complaints knowing what I know now. I should have been better prepared when I ordered by knowing what I was getting into. If I did, I would have known to expect the delays and lack of coordination. Once the telco realized what happened; however, they did everything they could humanly do to make everything right. I couldn't ask them to do any better in the end.

I'm several months into the new service now. It's slower than I'm used to, but then I knew that when I ordered a T-1 line. Still, in the country, it's a godsend. We can watch Netflix without a hitch and don't have to worry about data caps. We've hit its ceiling a couple of times on bandwidth by running too much at once, but we're adjusting very well. We also had some down days. I asked about our service level agreement and once all of the pieces came together, we ended up with a credit on our account.

I'd say, overall, I'm extremely satisfied. Sure, it's not blazing fast U-Verse, but for the country, it's great. Speed is painfully consistent. Now that the telephone man chased all the bugs out of the box, we get T-1 speed 24/7...no more and no less. I simply can't complain about that. Would I like to go a little faster? Sure, but I can't afford a bonded T-1 so I'm perfectly content with what I have. I don't regret a single minute of the switch from satellite to a T-1. Satellite is good, but a T-1 was exactly what we needed.

member for 9.6 years, 533 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
updated 9.2 years ago


Review by jimkyle See Profile

  • Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, OK, USA
  • Cost: $152 per month (24 month contract)
  • Install: about 8 days
  • Telco party AT&T
Fair on-line support, although not as good as it was a year ago
Company web pages badly out of date
Good value and extremely reliable
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

UPDATE 3 on 1 December 2014

I've now been on Uverse for slightly more than a year, and have developed mixed feelings about it. Speed and reliability are still quite good, but the TV programming is awful compared to DirecTV, our previous supplier, and we're seriously considering going back to them even though that would do away with our "bundle" discount. It's only got another 11 months to run, anyway.

I'm extremely unhappy, now, that AT&T continues to spam me with half a dozen UCE ads every day. They use a different IP address every time, making it impossible to filter out, but I suspect I'll eventually find some way to handle it. Aside from that, and the poor TV program quality (both content and technically -- pixellation is still far too frequent), the rest of my comments still apply.

UPDATE 2 on 9 November 2013:

For a number of reasons, I finally swapped my DSL service for Uverse as of four days ago. The primary reason was cost: after adding up what I was paying AT&T for POTS + DSL, and DirectTV for TV access, the 24-month price for a Uverse triple-play package (specially configured to match or exceed my existing installation) amounted to slightly less than half that much!

I should note that my bills are probably not representative of the average user; I have two POTS lines, and my DSL was the 5-static-IP package, so my $170/month cost for POTS + 3Mbit DSL was a bit high. Incidentally, I had serious problems with billing at the older changeover. While the web pages and the confirmation snail-mail from AT&T both said the DSL would be $55/month when I upgraded from 1536 Mbits, the initial bill was more than twice that. After two full months of telephone tag with an AT&T manager I finally got it down to $60/month, and eventually got the overpayment credited, but it left a very sour taste in my mouth where AT&T and their billing practices are concerned. I'm wary that something similar may show up with my initial Uverse bill.

With only four days experience I cannot yet have any in-depth report, but so far I've not experienced any of the horrors that the Uverse forum here report. The most disturbing thing to date has been the problem I encountered trying to set "pinholes" in the firewall of the Uverse modem/router -- a 2Wire 3801HGV unit -- for my FTP and Email servers. Its administrator access password isn't where everyone I asked told me to find it! Once I did locate it, though, configuration was a cinch, even easier than my previous 3347. I now have 18 Mbit internet, which is quite a jump from 3 Mbit and makes huge transfers much less tedious. Installation took almost 5 hours total, most of which was spent pulling cable around the outside of my house for the TV connection, and drilling through the brick wall into my home office for the lines to the modem. The installer totally replaced the NID, as well; it was a bit more than 30 years old. However the underground copper seems to not have been touched.

As on all AT&T residential accounts for the past 5 years, port 25 is blocked and they refuse to unblock it unless I change to a business account -- which would destroy the cost advantage for which I made the switch. I'm changing my outgoing email configuration to solve that little problem, though, and don't expect any trouble from it.

I did find that one of the TV receivers, connected via wireless, was getting very low signal strength; it fluctuated between two and three bars on the wireless receiver's display panel. Moving the wireless receiver from a location below the TV to one above it raised the signal strength enough to show four bars most of the time, never below three, and the frequent slight pixellation vanished. Aside from that, picture quality seems to be noticeably better than I was getting from DirecTV, and hopefully I won't lose signal during thunderstorms -- which are frequent here in OKC.

So far as phone service goes, the only difference I've found so far is an absence of background noise. Haven't yet run a test on my FAX line to see if it's working okay, but I was assured that it would. Porting my existing phone numbers went quite smoothly.

All in all, I'm a happy camper again at this point, although a bit apprehensive about what that first bill is going to be...

UPDATE on 28 January 2012:

At 4 p.m. on January 24, I suddenly lost all internet connectivity about 4 p.m. Central time. Calling AT&T service eventually got me to a human (with an almost incomprehensible accent), and after some discussion I managed to elevate the issue to Tier 2, and got there after only 27 minutes on hold for the transfer. The very nice person at Tier 2 examined my account record and told me a change order had discontinued my grandfathered 5-true-sticky plan and replaced it with the current 5-pseudo-static-via-PPPoE offering, in the process changing all of my IPs and thus invalidating all of my off-site references in addition to making it necessary to reconfigure all of my equipment to regain connectivity. She also said it would be impossible to reverse the change even though I had not requested it.

Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. However, the Tier 2 tech did give me the new IP set and the newly required network password, which should have enabled me to get back on line quickly (after rearranging my equipment so that I could log into PPPoE and use the new IPs).

It didn't work. The PPPoE login did not assign the new IP. Instead, it assigned me the IP that I had been using as my outgoing gateway of the old true-static IP block, and that address refused to let me go anywhere. I called back about 11 p.m.; it was easier to reach Tier 2 this time. The second tech reviewed the notes from my first call, and informed me that the order had not completed for some reason. He attempted to force its completion while I remained on the phone, and reported success. I saw no immediate change except that I was now pulling the gateway address for my new IP block; that still would not allow me to get any closer to the internet however. The tech advised that it might take the rest of the night for changes to propagate across all involved DNS servers, but assured me that all would be well by morning. He also gave me a case number to use, just in case I still had a problem the next day.

I was glad to have it, because nothing changed overnight. A third call to Tier 2 (the case number got me immediate transfer, and by then I had learned how to bypass the machine-programmed triage questions) told me that the order was still incomplete. The tech had to put me on hold for several minutes while consulting with the business office to determine why he could not force completion, but when he came back and told me to give it another try, I was successful in reaching the outside world. The problem wasn't fully solved yet, but at least I could come here and ask for help from the experienced forum members!

For one thing, I was still unable to use the five "usable" IP addresses of the new block, although the Tier 2 techs had assured me that at least the first of the five would be assigned automatically when I connected. Even more pressing was the fact that my wife's machine, located at the other end of the house and connected via 75 feet of Cat5 running through the walls and attic, was totally unable to connect to my router now, although it had been working perfectly with the old setup. After an entire evening and much of the next day checking configurations at both ends, I gave up and called my favorite repairman. He showed up about 5 p.m. on Thursday, verified that my configuration settings were correct at both ends of the line, and then began testing the cable itself -- which had patch cords at both ends, with the long run terminated in wall sockets at each end. Both patch cords tested out okay. The long cable showed an open conductor. For a number of reasons, repairing it is no longer an option, so the fallback solution was to install a USB wireless adapter on her machine and connect to the router in that manner.

However by that time, all the parts houses here had closed, so it was 10 a.m. Friday before I was able to obtain the adapter. Once I had it in place, connection was straightforward. One problem mostly solved!

While waiting to obtain the adapter, I continued my research and discussion here, and learned that it was necessary to make a slight change in my login ID to enable the "static" IP assignments to work. Not one of the three Tier 2 techs had informed me of that requirement although all three had told me that my existing ID would work properly (and it did work, although not completely properly).

I also learned that my WRT54G would not be able to handle multiple IPs, anyway; they will require a 3347 router (at $100 from AT&T). I also discovered that the new plan's price is more than $30/month lower than my old plan, so I'll be waiting to see whether that's reflected in my next bill! I'll also be investigating moving to a higher speed than the current 1536/256.

Making the change to the login ID has not yet had any effect on the IP assignments, so I cannot report that the situation has fully resolved at this time. Operation is still somewhat flaky, with intermittent packet loss as great as 20% according to the line quality tests here, and some of those packet loss situations may be responsible for an intermittent inability to connect to the outside world (which is usually fixed by simply repeating the attempt immediately).

Bottom line: I no longer have such a good feeling about my AT&T service, but have not yet become sufficiently disgusted with it to fall back on Cox Cable; UVerse would still be AT&T (although I've seen reports that moving from DSL to UVerse may be forced before much longer). It won't take much more, though, to tip the scales the other way...

ORIGINAL (much happier) REVIEW:

In my city, only two non-dialup options were available when I decided to get better speed. They were Cox Cable's @home service, and SBC's ADSL (with several resellers but only one actual plant). Having grown totally disillusioned with service from Cox (and dropping their cable in favor of a satellite dish for TV), that left me only one option.

I initially ordered basic residential service in April of 2000, as soon as it became available in my area. Because of distance from the CO and weak signal, I had to be capped at 384K download in order to have the service at all. Nevertheless that was still much better than dial-up and I was quite happy with it until encountering an EMI problem in late summer of 2002. While searching for a solution to that I discovered that an RT had been available in my area since November 2000 although I had not been notified of the possibility to upgrade my account.

I immediately ordered service on my second POTS line, to take advantage of the RT without down time, and placed my order on-line. It was confirmed, but the due date came and went with nothing happening. When I called, the sales rep could find no trace of the order; I placed it again, upgrading it to the 1500/256 5-static-IP business service since I do use the line for my data recovery service. This time, things happened exactly on schedule, and thanks to the official SBC reps here in the Southwestern Bell forum, I now have true broadband service, free of problems.

In the past five years I've had no significant signal outages, although my original modem (SpeedStream 5260) is showing its age and the replacement I bought at the time of the upgrade (5360) is also getting long in the tooth. Looks like I'll need to pick up a 4100 before long. (Edit as of December 2007: Both of the old modems finally did give up the ghost, and I'm now using a 4100 which does a great job.)

The company itself seems not to have many clues about using their web sites to best advantage, though. The help files are hopelessly out of date. Placing an on-line order simply didn't work, even though I received a "confirmation" E-mail message. The excellent support provided in the forum here, however, more than compensates for that shortcoming. I've learned more about the technical details of getting and keeping good service in the years that I've been active here, than I could ever hope to discover elsewhere.

Not long after I moved to the RT, the company discontinued true static IPs in favor of "sticky PPPoE" addresses. Were it not for that and the fact that any changes to my service would convert me to PPPoE connections, I'd take advantage of the price changes that would give me 6000/768 speeds for the same price I pay for 1536/512. Since I use a Linux box as my firewall and router, I'm unwilling to switch to PPPoE at all, and continue the service unchanged.

Bottom line: I'm a mostly happy camper, and advise anyone considering the choice between SBC and other providers to visit the forum here and get the real low-down before making any decisions. It's now been 5 years since I made the service change from CO to RT, and it's still performing excellently even though my costs are not in line with current standards.t

member for 21.4 years, 6333 visits, last login: 4.4 years ago
updated 9.3 years ago


David
Premium Member
join:2002-05-30
Granite City, IL

David

Premium Member

Stop by the forum and say hi

From the official support team

Thanks

Beach Boy
David

David

Premium Member

Re: Stop by the forum and say hi

I believe ken is working on that as we speak, might want to drop him an IM..