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 Review by TechieJimmy 
member for 11.9 years, 302 visits, last login: 3.2 years ago
updated 7 years ago
 Puyallup,Pierce,WA
 $42 per month Qwest- CLEC party: Qwest
 "Its DSL" "not the best upload" "It works"
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Qwest service is pretty good. their billing dept needs some help tho.. it took 6 months before they would stop double charging me... speaking with managment was not better then the first person who picked up... every month i was told it woudl be fixed... just to find out i was still double charged... very unprofessional
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Review by rodr
member for 9.5 years, 81 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
updated 8.2 years ago
- Fairfield,Solano,CA
- Contract price not specified.
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This review is obsolete. Is there no way to delete them?
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 Review by Good Ol Dan
member for 12 years, 3380 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 8.8 years ago
- Spring,Montgomery,TX
- Contract price not specified.
- (12 month contract)
 about 60 days- "Both PhoenixDSL and Northpoint are dead and gone"
- "Both PhoenixDSL and Northpoint are dead and gone"
- "Ancient history now... move on, nothing to see here!"
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Both PhoenixDSL and Northpoint are dead and gone. It's ancient history now... move on, nothing to see here!
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 Review by peterr
member for 12 years, 1658 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
updated 9.2 years ago
- Del Mar,San Diego,CA
- $39 per month
- (12 month contract)
- CLEC party: NorthPoint
- "Great pre-sales, tech support answers phone quickly, static IP"
- "NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER call you back. Oh, it's Telocity now."
- "Good service, reasonably priced. Install coordination sucks. NEVER CALL YOU BACK"
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After being denied DSL by Pac Bell (too far from CO), I called Phoenix DSL to see if they would be able to provide service. The salesman was very easy to do business with, and seemed to know his stuff. I ordered SDSL via Northpoint at 416/208 on 3/27/00. Cost was 49.99/mo plus $200 installation and modem which would be rebated by Northpoint. I was told that there would be a 30-60 day installation wait. Oh well, after having read the reviews here at DSL reports, I was prepared for that, and worse....
On Monday 4/3, I noticed a Pacific Bell van parked outside my house, so I went outside to see what was going on. The Pac Bell guy was installing the outside line - woo hoo, unbelievable - only one week since ordering!! All was not well, however. The Pac Bell guy managed to disconnect my existing phone service, which was restored the next day. Told me that the line was bad, and dissapeared for a couple of hours. When he returned, he told me that he installed a brand new copper line between some poles. He did complete a loop test with Northpoing to the CO, and everything looked good.
Monday 4/10 I called Phoenix, who told me that Northpoint had scheduled an inside wiring appointment on 4/12. I had to be out of town that day, so we rescheduled Northpoint to 4/15. (Why had'nt Phoenix called ME to let me know about this?)
Saturday 4/15 the Northpoint guy shows up (actually not Northpoint, but a sub-contractor), completes the inside wiring and tests the setup. Unable to get the modem to sync - boo hoo (oh yeah, I forgot - the modem turned up between 4/10 and 4/15 - don't remember exactly when - 3COM SDSL modem). He leaves and I call Phoenix tech support who tell me to leave the system running.
I wait. I wait and wait. I wait and wait and wait. Finally I call back Phoenix on 4/19. I am told that there is a "ground fault" on the line and that a trouble ticket has been opened with Pacific Bell. 4/21, the green light comes on the DSL modem, and I appear to be working, although slowly with many errors on the ethernet link. Call Phoenix. Wait.
Now I check the Phoenix information on DSL reports and see that the price has been dropped to 39.99 and speed increased to 768 - cool, so I call Phoenix sales and get the salesman to agree to reduce my contract price - I don't have to sign a new contract. Very cool.
(I don't have dates for the following, this is from memory)
Meanwhile, back at the link, things appear to be fixed up. The light is now solid green, and I have no line errors. Check link speed, getting 208/208. Call Phoenix. Wait. Phoenix agree to have Northpoint crank to speed up. Wait a day, recheck the speed - great, now I am getting 480/480 -woo hoo. Only problem is the line is a bit flakey, so I call Phoenix again. Speed gets reduced to 208/208 - bummer. Call Phoenix again, this time they seem to have it about right. Speed hovering around 400/400 (mostly).
So, it has taken about 1 month to get it up and running, not too bad considering some of the horror stories you read here. I would still like to try to squeeze some more speed from the link, but for ~$40/mo. I think this is pretty good value. Ping times can be inconsistent, but generally the service is pretty solid.
Would I recommend Phoenix? Yes, I think I would. I wish that they would call you back when they say they will. (Actually, I did get a call back from support - once).
Northpoint screwed up the rebate. I never received one, so I called them 6/13 and complained. Spoke to a very nice lady who told me that Northpoint had changed the rebate administration company, and that some records were not transferred. Said she would resubmit my request. Sure enough, I just got my check for $200 - party time!
UPDATE!!!!
Well, since Phoenixdsl has benn taken over by Megapath, so far I have not
experienced any problems. I am playing the waiting game and wonder
what will happen next - there still appear to be a few DSL ISPs serving
this area (other than Pac Bell), and at least I have a dedicated line
for my SDSL.
MORE UPDATES!!!
2/13 Got phone call from Telocity - my Phoenixdsl service should be taken over by them. Gave them a CC #, they told me they would email a confirmation. No email as yet.
3/7 Well, got the Telocity gateway in the mail while I was away on a business trip. Got back and hooked it up, and it seems to work. DSLR say 380/380 - not too bad.
Seems like Telocity is getting their act together.....
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Review by gann
member for 12.5 years, 619 visits, last login: 7.4 years ago
updated 9.3 years ago
- Culver City,Los Angeles,CA
- Contract price not specified.
- SBC
- "N/A"
- "N/A"
- "N/A"
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Phoenix Networks no longer exists. They've been out of business for a couple of years now. 
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Review by Shynes98
member for 11.9 years, 252 visits, last login: 3.3 years ago
updated 9.5 years ago
- Milford,Worcester,MA
- $39 per month
- (12 month contract)
- "If you get it to work it is nice I guess I don't know of any one has gotten that far"
- "You will end up like all Phoenix customers Not working using Dialup and That is painfull"
- "Don't waste your time!"
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Ordering it is the Easiest part after that you are all down hill.
They never call you back.
I wasted about 2 months of my time on these Guys. It only took 1.5 months after Bell Atlantic had come out to my house for them to figure out that there was no more lines that were available for DSL.
I recomend that you don't bother with Phoenix!
I signed up with Bell Atlantic.
I was up and Running in 2 weeks.
That is how it should work.
Stephen
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 Review by sadowski
member for 12.1 years, 3980 visits, last login: 142 days ago
updated 9.6 years ago
- Buffalo,Erie,NY
- $39 per month
- (24 month contract)
- Verizon
- "Excellent quality of service."
- "Rough and tumble installation."
- "Worth the pain."
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Just an update: PhoenixDSL was sold to MegaPath who essentially said to hell with the residential customers. I reluctantly switched to Verizon OnLine in May of 2001 and have had wonderful service. Much to my surprise VOL has been the best broadband experience I've had yet. Low latency, exceptional uptime and availability. Great news retention and completion rate. Would like better than 128Kb/s upstreamm but I'm working on that. I'd highly recomend VOL.
==== Old PhoenixDSL Review ====
I used to subscribe for two years to Adelphia's Powerlink service. For
months the service had been awful and there were other problems with
Powerlink prior to late '99 and early 2000 that forewarned of things to
come. In any event, I wanted out. I started making calls to DSL providers.
Eventually PhoenixDSL called me and said it was available at my location. I
decided to go with it. Two year contract to avoid paying for the router and
installation.
The salesman was certainly receptive to questions but in the end none of the
things regarding the installation he outlined would happen. Bell Atlantic, I
was told, would call and schedule an appointment to install a line; they
didn't... they just showed up one day and did it. I never received any
information packet via postal mail and I wasn't shipped the router (the
installer brought it).
Bell Atlantic installed the new line thirty days after I sent in my
contract. Rhythms called two days later and scheduled their bit for the
following Thursday (4 business days after the call). The installer arrived
on schedule but left me very disappointed. He refused to drill the little
hole to bring the new line into the house. I could have done it myself, I
guess, and others offered but it was a part of the installation that was
included in the contract. Phone calls to Phoenix were frustrating. Everyone
agreed the install couldn't be done without that little hole but no one knew
for sure exactly why it wasn't being done. Turns out the installer's
insurance doesn't cover it. After a week, the VP of Costumer Relations
offers me a deal: cancel the contract or do it myself and get three months
of free service in exchange. I took the three months and had an electrician
do all the internal wiring (for less than the cost of three months service I
might add). The following week Rhythms is back to do the installation. Then
I hear the dreaded phrase, "No synch!"
That unfortunately was on a Thursday afternoon of a holiday weekend. I
patiently waited and started the telephone calls the next week when service
had not started over the holiday. My first call was a waste. I spoke with a
rather nice support person at Phoenix who called back several times after
talking to Rhythms. Apparently they first told her there was a power outage
at the location and wanted her to check with me that it was restored. Well,
there never was a power outage. I have no idea where that bit of
misinformation arose from.
Several hours later she calls again to tell me that Rhythms wants me to be
certain the computer is powered up and the router connected to the line so
they could run some tests. As I explained to the lady from Phoenix, their
was no sync so they could not test anything involving the router or my
machine.
I didn't hear from her the next day so I called. I was 'escalated' again
(get used to hearing that word if you have a problem... it doesn't really
seem to mean much but it sounds important). I was put through to a higher up
trouble shooter. He assured me he'd get on it and the next day he did call
back. We did a three-way conference call with someone from Rhythms who
verified that it appeared to be one of the problems speculated by the
installer: the Cisco rack, I was told, wasn't configured correctly at the
CO. The installer mentioned that this was a possibility because he said I
was one of the first in the area to get the Cisco router.
That was around noon on a Thursday. I was told it would probably be fixed by
the weekend. Around 6PM he called back and said it should be all set. It
was. We did some speed tests. He made some adjustments and all was well.
That was six weeks ago. I waited this long to write a review to see how well
the service performed. I am happy to say it has been excellent. I can not
report one problem to date. They did honor so far the three months credit
too. Despite the wait for the line and the installation problems I very
happy. I'm getting the throughput promised (768/408 - typically 638/350 in
practice throughout the day) and it's always available unlike with Adelphia
where you just never knew if it would be working and if not for how long it
would be out.
PhoenixDSL has communications problems. The installation ordeal was only an
ordeal because no one knew for certain what was happening and who was doing
what. If you can get beyond that then expect excellent service if my
experience is any indication. As I said, I'm very pleased.
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Review by JoelG
member for 11.9 years, 173 visits, last login: 8.3 years ago
updated 9.7 years ago
- Fort Washington,Montgomery,PA
- Contract price not specified.
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u
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 Review by LuisOrtiz
member for 12.1 years, 565 visits, last login: 118 days ago
updated 10 years ago
- Hyde Park,Suffolk,MA
- $39 per month
- (12 month contract)
- Verizon
- CLEC party: Verizon
- "Excellent value, decent customer service"
- "Usual ILEC/CLEC snafus, No pro-active communication w/customers"
- "Decent folks to deal with, just wish they communicated better"
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Summary: Ordered 416/208 SDSL for $50/month on 4/17, got 764/764 SDSL on 6/9 for $40 a month and decent latency and upload/download speeds. For that I got a single static IP address and 5 POP mailboxes, and FTP accounts. Phoenix uses DBN.NET for the back office services (POP3 MAIL, NNTP) and response times are better on average than when I was going to my local ISP. If Phoenix was better about updating its new customers about what is going on, they would be hands-down the best to deal with. A weekly email saying what the current state of the order and what the next expected event is, who is responsible for it and when it is scheduled to get done would dramatically improve matters.
Northpoint was the DSL provider and the 3COM SDSL modem they sent worked just fine with my Power Macintosh G3 running both MacOS and Linux. Cant get the old SparcStation 2 in the basement running Linix to act as a NAT/Firewall yet, but I'm sure it will only take a few more days
Week by week log:
Week 1: (April 14) PhoenixDSL faxes me the contract. An nice enclosure explains the five steps to installation and a warning: "Phoenix may contact you within 3 4 weeks." Next day, the signed contract is faxed back to PhoenixDSL.
Week 4: (May 13) Query to PhoenixDSL "Has the [outside wiring] test been scheduled?"
Week 5: (May 15) Message from PhoenixDSL "According to Northpoint, there are no ports/pairs available, but they will check to see if more will become available". Reply to PhoenixDSL, "This is BS. I have a extra pair already coming into the house!". (May 16) Message from PhoenixDSL "We are unable to yreuse' existing lines . . . Please advise if you wish to wait [for] ports [to] become available." Reply to PhoenixDSL I have called Northpoint directly to discuss the "lines/ports" confusion: PhoenixDSL needs to contact Northpoint, through normal channels, to resolve the confusion. Message from PhoenixDSL The matter will be passed along to our escalation team. (May 18) Message from PhoenixDSL The matter is now in the hands of our escalation team.
Week 6 (May 25) Query to PhoenixDSL "What is the escalation team doing?" (May 26) Message from PhoenixDSL Bell Atlantic will attend to outside wiring next week, on May 30.
Week 7 (May 30/31) Bell Atlantic conducts its outside work.
Week 8 (June 7): Query to PhoenixDSL "No one has contacted me to schedule an inside wiring date [or] when and how my DSL equipment will be delivered." Reply from Phoenix DSL Your order is now with the inside wire team; contact them for an appointment. (June 8): DSL modem arrives. I call for inside wiring appointment; there is one available today, in the afternoon. Installer arrives on schedule; line is installed. Install started at 4PM, finished at 6PM. No downtime so far!
[Update 5/21/2002]
Phoenix was bought by Telocity which was bought the Direct TV folks.
Not much changed except that News access has now been limited
to 250 Mbytes per day and seems to be down a day each week.
The honeymoon is over, but there are few better prospects.
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