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Review by periginald 
Posted: 10.1 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.8 years ago
 Hoboken,Hudson,NJ
 Contract price not specified.
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Short, simple review of my experiences with Bell Atlantic InfoSpeed DSL =
(Northern NJ-Hoboken- the Jersey City CO)
Sales: A pretty painless process considering the fact that I placed the =
order for three 640/90 lines (Myself and my two roommates). The salesman =
had only basic knowledge, and suffered when anything complex was asked =
of him. However, he was diligent enough to find out some of my answers =
and personally call me back. In retrospect, the InfoSpeed service was a =
new offering from BellAtlantic, and they should have smoothed out most =
kinks in the sales process by now. The Modem and NIC card arrived =
quickly as well as a fact sheet detailing all the relevant information =
(IP addresses, smtp settings, etc.). Sales rating: 7/10
Install: I had the service installed in January of 99. This was THREE =
weeks after ordering! They were way backed up, with not enough =
"qualified techs" to handle installs. The install went relatively =
smooth, with the exception of one minor glitch in one of the three =
lines. That was resolved the next day. The wiring technicians weren't =
too bad, but the onsite software configurator was horrible. He lacked =
pretty basic knowledge of Windows, and could seemingly handle only the =
basic installs. I had to configure two of the three PC's network =
settings for him. The installs were very time-consuming, since any =
problems required the tech to make several calls, and wait around doing =
nothing. This was only the tip of the iceberg. Initial install rating: =
5/10
Reliability of line: Happy enough to have a line that is much faster =
then my crappy 56k, I quickly got spoiled by the blazing speed. =
Downloads usually peaked around 450k. However, during the first few =
months, frequent, long outages were a problem. Once or twice a week, the =
line would go down. Speed was also very inconsistent. You'd have to =
cross your fingers on a daily basis. Since June, the quality of the =
connection has since stabilized. There has been an improvement in speed, =
too, usually peaking out over 500k. With one exception. One of the three =
lines has suffered a problem where Bell Atlantic has screwed the IP =
address, and keeps getting knocked off line by another user. This has =
been most frustrating, and stops all work on the net for hours at a =
time. Overall reliability: 7/10 (for two lines) 4/10 (for the third).
Tech support: Oh boy. The worst I've ever encountered. You call the tech =
support line listed on the Westell Modem, which is the InfoSpeed HQ. =
Very very long hold times. The technicians that answer usually never =
know how to address any problem. Most of the time, they refer you to the =
BellAtlantic ISP, who then refers you back to InfoSpeed. Another problem =
I have, and please don't take this the wrong way. I have no problem with =
people from other countries coming to America to make a better life for =
themselves. The sky's the limit. But if you're going to be in a sevice =
sector which requires you to speak, PLEASE learn how to speak CLEAR =
English! Several times I encountered technicians who were IMPOSSIBLE to =
understand. Imagine a technician who doesn't know anything, AND can't =
speak english! It's highly frustrating and unsatisfying. OK, the latest =
problem has been with this IP address screw up. 9 or 10 calls with =
absolutely NO results. The 11th call, I reach a person who seems like =
they care that I have a problem, and speaks clear English. I feel =
relieved, and it seems like I'm getting somewhere. I request a new IP =
address. He even calls me back to tell me that he couldn't help me that =
night, and that they techs "are working on the problem". A few days go =
by, no response. I call back again, and luckily get someone again who =
speaks English, and seems like they want to help. She appears to have =
solved the problem (I don't know how, but the line has been working =
flawlessly the past few weeks). I am very reluctant still to even call =
for tech support. Overall tech support rating: 2/10 (for the two English =
speaking folks I've talked to).
Overall rating: 5/10 - I will examine Cable modems once available in the =
area. They seem less expensive.
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Review by dfaux
Posted: 10.1 years ago
(review was emailed from domain fas.harvard.edu)
undisclosed location
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I just got DSL from Bell Atlantic (Boston) the other week and it works great. I wasn't around for the installation (another housemate pulled that duty) but from all accounts it went smoothly. We have a linux box (RH 6.0) running as a firewall and four clients accessing the web without problems. In fact, it took us two days to get the access correct, and most of that was wasted when we had to fix a bad power supply on the firewall machine.
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Review by srs5694
Posted: 10.2 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.9 years ago
Malden,Middlesex,MA
Contract price not specified.
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I moved to my current residence in Malden, Massachusetts in early February of 1999, and at that time, Bell Atlantic (hereafter "BA") showed my area would have DSL in 2-3 months. Needless to say, it took longer, and there were several detours. For one thing, at one point I signed up with Speakeasy for access, but Covad (Speakeasy's DSL provider) had difficulties scheduling an appointment with BA for connection. After waiting on this for close to a month, I decided to switch to BA when BA called me to say their service was available, with faster downstream speed and at $10/month less than Speakeasy. I made this switch with some degree of disgust because I suspect BA was deliberately delaying their competitor's installs. (This is part of the reason for the low install co-ordination rating I've given BA.) I ordered BA's 640/90 service for $50/month plus $200 for installation and the "modem" (an Alcatel 1000, though I gather BA has switched to another model). I was given two install dates for inside and outside work for roughly three weeks after I placed the order. BA is currently using static IP addresses, though there are rumors floating around that they'll switch to dynamic addresses sometime in the future.
Oddly, a BA tech did show up shortly after I cancelled the Speakeasy/Covad order with an order in hand to install a line for Covad. When I tried calling BA to see if the work this tech did could help speed up my own installation, I was totally unable to reach anybody who could give me an answer. The people who did answer the phone said that only the person who originally took the order could help me, and she did not return my calls, despite my having left several messages. (This is the other part of the reason for the low install co-ordination rating, and part of the reason for the poor tech support rating.)
In any event, I did receive my DSL "modem" promptly after placing the order. (The BA package normally includes a NIC, but as I had a spare, I told them not to send one, and am now using my system via a SOHOware 10/100 NIC.) The tech showed up as scheduled on August 6 to do the outside wiring. On the 9th, I was surprised to find THREE BA people standing on my doorstep for the scheduled inside install work. One person was in charge, and the other two were trainees. The woman who was in charge wasn't happy with the state of my inside wiring, so she and her co-workers ran a new wire from the outside box into my apartment. This work went reasonably smoothly, though it took a while. When it was done, my "modem" wouldn't sync up. The techs weren't familiar with my Linux setup, so they asked me to bring up assorted bits of configuration information, and ultimately decided that the problem was probably at the CO. They called and, after spending some time on hold (even BA's own people get put on hold, it seems), obtained a new IP address, which I proceeded to enter, and which works.
When I had ordered service, I'd been told that my hostname would be the same as my username, making my system smithrod.bellatlantic.net. Once connected, though, I found that this wasn't the case; I'm adsl-aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd.bellatlantic.net, where "aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd" is derived from my IP address. (This based on a reverse DNS lookup through BA's DNS server.) This is a minor nuissance in Linux, so I called to ask about it, and spent the next two hours being bounced back and forth between the DSL and ISP arms of BA. Each side claimed that hostname assignment was the others' responsibility and that they had no idea why I'd been told that smithrod.bellatlantic.net was what I'd use, nor why an attempt to do a DNS lookup on that hostname prior to the installation had returned the IP address I'd previously been given. Whenever a tech from one side bounced me to the other, I ended up back with some ignorant flunkie. On the final transfer, I got back to the obnoxious multi-level "press the 2 key to wait twenty minutes" prompts that you get when you dial the number to begin with, so I decided it'd be easier to reconfigure my system to hide that hideous hostname than to pursue the matter further with BA's alleged tech support.
In the nearly four weeks I've had the service, it's been up and reliable except for one point where it stopped working. The "modem" still showed a link, but I was unable to get an outside connection. I'd heard of similar problems caused by the Alcatel, so I cycled its power; no improvement. I restarted all networking services on my Linux box; no improvement. I rebooted Linux, and it started working again. I don't know if the glitch was caused by the "modem" or something flaking out on my computer. The symptoms suggest the latter, but the reports of Alcatel 1000 flakiness are fresh in mind, and I've never encountered anything quite like that with Linux before, so I'm uncertain. I'm giving BA and the Alcatel the benefit of the doubt for purposes of the connection reliability rating (and it would only move down half a point even if the problem were with BA or the Alcatel "modem" they provided). My system is up 24/7, and use net access on and off for ~12 hours a day, so I'd notice serious connection problems, and have seen none, aside from this one incident.
On fast sites, my download speeds hover around 60KB/s, which is about what I'd expect on 640kbps lines, given overhead. Naturally, performance degrades on slow sites and when overall Internet load is high.
News service seems mostly reliable, though I've noticed an occasional "missing" message, and the news server doesn't appear to have as many newsgroups as some. I've no experience with BA's news service earlier than a month ago, but I gather from newsgroup postings that it used to be pretty bad, but has been reformed recently. If so, they've clearly hired somebody competent to do the updates, though there might still be a bit of room for improvement, particularly in terms of the number of newsgroups carried. Mail service is also reliable, as near as I can tell, though my local mail daemon doesn't connect with BA's outgoing mail server for outgoing mail (I still connect to BA's POP server for incoming mail). I'm running DNS locally, and so have little direct contact with BA's DNS servers.
BA's terms of service (TOS) document is written with dialup in mind, which a few clauses that say restrictions on things like servers and NAT don't apply to DSL lines. There's no further clarification of what IS permitted for DSL. When I was talking to BA prior to placing my order, the techs had no problem with the idea of my running a Linux system. Although the installation people clearly didn't know Linux, they also had no objections to it (they just let me handle the software configuration).
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 Review by brapp
Posted: 10.2 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 969 visits, last login: 3.4 years ago
Rockville,Montgomery,MD
$39 per month
 about 14 days
 "Pretty reliable, good download speed"
 "Upload speed could be better, PPPoE is evil"
 "Good deal for the money especially with reduced price"
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First some quick background. For the last three years I've lived in my college (American University)'s dorms, so I've been living in the fast lane access-wise with a network connection. I just moved into an apartment in Rockville, MD (outside Washington, DC) and I felt the need to have more bandwith (its really hard to go down to 56K after the network).
I ordered Bell Atlantics Infospeed 640/90 package which I signed up for online. I received a call two days later from one of their reps asking me if I'd be interested in participating in their beta test for dynamic addressing. They offered me free installation and modem plus one month of service. I was going to sign up anyway, so they didn't really have to sell me much. I set the two installation dates, one on a Tuesday, the other Wednesday for about a week and a half later.
The first guy came on Tuesday. He showed up at about 8:30am, and got to work. Unfortunately, the tech back at Bell Atlantic had him on hold for hours, so he didn't end up finishing until almost 4 hours later. He apologized for the time it took and was on his way.
On Wednesday, the second guy came about noon. Being in an apartment they had to install the splitter inside. He took care of all the wiring, etc while I had already setup most of the networking/modem stuff. We tried to connect with the address I was given when I talked to the bellatlantic.net people but it didn't work. He called in, and a few minutes later I had a new address and things seem to be working well.
From what I know so far, I'll be testing the PPPoE setup, but have yet to see any evidence of it (But maybe I'm just missing it). Right now I have a static IP, but I don't know how long that will last.
The speed seems to pretty good (~60k/sec d/l in netscape), and it is about average of what I got over the school network. Only difference was the school network had the occasional huge spikes which were always cool.
The equipment is a Westell CAP modem (and Westell splitter). I'm using my own network card, an Etherlink III PCI.
So far I haven't really had to deal with tech support much, but the installation guys seems to have mixed results with them.
Overall a very good experience.
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Review by sjdavidson
Posted: 10.2 years ago
member for 10.3 years, 8 visits, last login: 123 days ago
Brooklyn,Kings,NY
Contract price not specified.
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I ordered 1.6Mbps/90Kbps with bellatlantic.net as ISP in early July. They scheduled the usual two day install process and didn't show up on the first day, but did on the second and installed the NID. The tech was told that there were no more pairs to the point in the house where the modem was to connect and that a line would need to be run to that point, he said that the next day someone would be out to run that line and hook me up. No one showed. A call to our always courteous salesman resulted in a rescheduled date, no one showed. We went away on vacation.
Upon returning I decided to run the line myself and do the install since I thought I had all the necessary information and hardware.
When I bought the house I installed many new Cat 3 telephone lines on home runs to the basement, but the runs to the third floor were all daisy chained on station-wire.
So, I pulled a Cat5 run to the office where my router and hub are for the home network and wired the whole thing together. Voila! The Alcatel 1000 synchronized and with the BeadleNet Router/Firewall hooked up the ethernet lights even lit up . . . but no connection to the net.
I then spent about 6 hours over the course of two days waiting (mostly) and talking (sometimes) on the telephone with various bell atlantic and bellatlantic.net techs only to be given three different sets of static ip addresses and gateways . . . only the last of the three worked. Since then things have been rock solid with (large) downloads going as fast as ~95KB.
I have a home network with 4-5 Win98 machines (five when my laptop is at home) and two printers on printservers. The beadlenet router (www.beadlesoft.com) uses dhcp and nat to handle the machines and I've just assigned the printservers ip addresses at the top of the address block . . . everything is working well, but I dread the next call to bellatlantic.
p.s. Bellatlantic began charging for service as of the second scheduled install visit, which never happened. When I called the telephone number on the bill to complain that service wasn't actually started until three weeks later, the billing center connected me with BA's DSL center who claimed that I hadn't been billed yet, when I read the bill to the call-taker there was a long silence and then 10 minutes on hold after which I was told that I would receive service for no charge for one month and that billing would start after the first month.
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Review by eldorice
Posted: 10.2 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.9 years ago
21215-2404
Contract price not specified.
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I got a call from a rep four weeks ago. Since I was a IDSN customer the only payment I had to make was $99.00 for the splitter installation. The installers showed up four hours early on both days (splitter on Monday, inside stuff on Wednesday). But the connection didn't to work at the 640k speed I ordered, it was 4k!! (I'm not kidding). During this 10 day period, I found out that Bell Atlantic InfoSpeed and BellAtlantic.net don't talk to each other. Typical want time on the phone to tech support was 30 minutes, and the few times I got through the tech didn't have a clue. Sometimes I would decide to leave a voice mail and either the mailbox was full, or I left a message and I NEVER got a call back.
Only after I called customer service and DEMANDED to talk to a high level supervisor did I get any satisfaction. I told her to switch me DIRECTLY to a high level DSL tech or supervisor, (do NOT put me back in the queue) or cancel my account.
The DSL tech and I talked and he pulls my trouble number. He says the problem is in the equipment bellatlantic.net owns but they haven't called them back. I said fine, set up a conference call between myself, you (DSL guy), a high level tech from bellatlantic.net, and customer service. I made it real clear to give me a straight answer or forget the whole thing. I was told the problem affects me and 11 other customers in Baltimore City. Customer service then says fine, I won't be charged for my service until it works, and if you techs can't get together, I'll get MY boss in on this call, and you won't like what he says.
Now I was promised a phone call when the service would start working at 640k. Of course I got no phone call. I tried the connection on saturday 8/7/99, two days after the conference call, and it's been working since.
My conclusions of Bell Atlantic InfoSpeed DSL and bellatlantic.net:
1. DSL price can't be beat. I'm charged 39.99 a month for 640k DSL with unlimited access, 10.00 a month for bellatlantic.net (must stay with them for a year though).
2. Tech support SUCKS. To get one in within a reasonable time, you must call late at night or early in the morning.
When you do get through you usually get someone who always assume the problem is at your end. It would make a lot more sense if when a customer called a message would say for example:
"Customers in the -------- area(s) will experience (whatever problem) with (connectivity, www, email, etc.) for (whatever expected amount of time)."
3. The speed is outstanding. It's great to download files at up to 60k/sec vs. 10 to 14k/sec with the ISDN I had, and the DSL is unlimited service. (The slowest d/l I've done has been at 45k/sec.)
4. If BA ever gets their tech support together, other ISP's better watch out. But in the meantime BA is ok if price is your main concern. But if you want better service/tech support, look elsewhere.
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Review by avogadro
Posted: 10.2 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 41 visits, last login: 1.4 years ago
Bethesda,Montgomery,MD
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I ordered BA Infospeed 640 (640k down, 90k up) in December and was given very extensive and accurate information from a well informed order-taking representative and was assigned a January install date. This was actually 2 consecutive days -- one for the BA telco guys to install the splitter and test the line, and the next day for the bellatlantic.net guys to connect the splitter, hook up the wiring, install the Westell box and the NIC, install drivers and configure, and get it running.
The techs came within an hour of the promised time and did a pretty good job. They were still on a learning curve, since BA had just gone off beta testing and begun rolling out a month or two earlier.
I have a static IP at this point, but I understand they will eventually move to dynamic.
Service has been very solid. I have very occasionally had DNS problems, but much less than with my previous dialup provider. News was originally very spotty, but that has improved dramatically. No problems with email, etc.
The one problem I had was that the 3Com NIC card, which worked fine under Win95, does not appear to work under OS/2, but that ultimately appears to be a problem with my OS/2 installation, not the card. I tried a Linksys card, which also gave me problems under OS/2.
This led to my one poor experience with customer service. After installing the Linksys card, I called customer service to have my MAC address updated, since the BA system is MAC-specific. I had to try several numbers, since some of the numbers I was given were ISDN-specific, and others were for locations open during business hours only. I finally tried a number with a live person on the end, but had to wait over an hour to get through. She took my request for a MAC change and said it might take up to 24 hours to implement. I was going on vacation the next day, so that was fine with me. Got back from vacation and ... no connection. I was too busy to deal with it, and used dialup for a while. Finally, instead of facing the telephone jail, I decided to try putting in the old 3COM NIC and fired up Win95. Success ... which meant they never processed my MAC change -- after a month, and now six months. Apparently that MAC change went into the ether instead of being processed within 24 hours. Such changes should be taken care of within minutes, so one can troubleshoot.
Anyway, I am very happy with my BA Infospeed connection under Win95, even though the 3COM card doesn't work under my OS/2 installation and disables the sound card in OS/2. The OS/2 problems are not as important as they might once have been, since I find myself having to use Win95 stuff increasingly for unrelated reasons and expect to be giving up OS/2 eventually. I just hope they don't eventually process the MAC change.
Also, in the last month, BA has been sending me emails and leaving phone messages telling me that Infospeed is now available in response to my inquiries made in November. Apparently their database never got updated when I signed up for service. Nevertheless, this means that they took 8 or 9 months after service was available to get back to me. (I contacted them again last December once I found out that my CO was DSL-equipped.) So their marketing machine has some flaws.
Price is excellent. It was originally $59/month including bellatlantic.net ISP with various discounts for signing up for 12 months. Two months later, they emailed me that they had reduced the price by $10.
Speed rocks. While the various net speed test sites tell me I have a 280-320k connection speed, I have maintained a 400k connection for an hour-long BA-sponsored live RealVideo feed and got at 70kB/s speed for the Quicktime4 Star Wars trailer. It's also nice to download huge MSIE upgrades in a few minutes.
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Review by Dale Sorenson
Posted: 10.2 years ago
member for 10.2 years, 10 visits, last login: 3.7 years ago
New York,New York,NY
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After Bell Atlantic reversed their previous anti-Macintosh policy I chose them as my DSL provider because they offered the best price for the bandwidth and because they can install aDSL service on my existing phone line without having to run a new wire. I ordered 604K/90K aDSL for $50/month and a $200 installation charge which includes a WestTel DSL modem.
While BA is now supports Mac, they're still BA. They're bureaucratic and incompetent. My installation appointment was cancelled twice, lost once and I was stood up for confirmed appointments twice. The order for my WestTel aDSL modem was lost adding two additional weeks of waiting. I was charged for those weeks anyway. It took hours on the phone to get a promise of a credit, which I still haven't received after three weeks of waiting.
In other words, getting the service installed was every bit as frustrating as I'd expected it to be. I've had service for 9 days. When connected to a good server, I can get as high as 65K/second downloads. It works well, when it's up.
Two days after I got it, my service went down for about 18 hours. On my first inquiry to technical support I was told that an upgrade was being performed. If that's the case, why wasn't I warned in advance? On my second inquiry I was told that DSL service was down for all of NYC. If that's the case, why did I get an explanation and an apology after service was restored?
I chose Bell Atlantic because I figured the cost savings would be worth the hassles. Time will tell . I recommend against BA unless price is your number one priority. If you're willing to pay more for the same bandwidth but better service, there are much better providers.
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Review by BillSomerville
Posted: 10.3 years ago
member for 10.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 10.2 years ago
Mclean,Fairfax,VA
Contract price not specified.
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I had 1.5Mb/90Kb ADSL installed in late 1997. Since then, there have been no detectable outages, and performance has always been good (relative to what you'd expect by time of day - all providers are subject to the speed of the larger Internet). In calm periods, I've been able to download from local sites at nearly the rated speed (e.g. 150KB/sec).
Since I installed under the market trial, my install experience was probably not typical, but I was impressed by the hardware/network folks (if not the ISP folks).
I have a Westell ATU-R connected to a Linux NAT/firewall box, and am sharing the connection among 2-3 machines on my internal network. The Linux box obtains an address from BA via DHCP. The internal network obtains addresses from Linux also via DHCP. Apparently, BA is using static IP for new rollouts, but will be switching to dynamic IP later. Unless you are planning on putting up a web server, it shouldn't really matter to you.
Having only one IP address means you will have to find some kind of routing/NAT/proxy solution like Linux, WinGate, WinProxy, Win98 ICS, etc.
BA as an ISP leaves something to be desired. Until recently, their news server(s) were poorly maintained, and the feeds were often missing large portions of the feed. Some feeds (e.g. ClariNews) only recently have started to work. Mail and DNS are OK. Unfortunately, there were't many choices for DSL-capable ISP's, and it was logistially simpler to keep BA or I'd have switched long ago.
I have to pay extra for another e-mail address for my wife. That is a lose, and other (e.g. cable modem) providers have up to 5 e-mail addresses per account free. BA knows this, since they sent out a market trial survey, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one complaining about this. The cost is nominal, but it is the principle of the thing...
Since they still haven't moved me from the trial platform to the rollout platform, I'm being charged a discounted rate for service, but the rates as quoted seem pretty reasonable.
Rollout of ADSL has been much slower than originally promised, due in part, I suspect, to larger than anticipated demand (duh!), and lack of technical resources. DSL rollouts aren't simple, since in most cases you have to install a home network for the rollee.
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Verizon Online DSL
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