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Review by nokiatech 
member for 12.6 years, 3061 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 2.7 years ago
 Stuart,Martin,FL
 $43 per month about 3 days AT&T "Solid speed." "Not the fastest game in town. Typical telco BS" "For the money it's hard to argue with."
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08/12/10 update
Haven't been with ATT DSL is quite a few years now. They've become dirt cheap for what you get and with 2 little children at home now I deemed it smart to have a landline phone just in case.
Comcast here is definitely faster but ATT promises and delivers a sold 6 megabit connection. Service is reliable and consistently up. For the price of comcast internet I'm getting ATT internet PLUS the landline. It's not as fast as comcast but it's not much slower either. I miss powerboost for sure but for sustained downloads they aren't much different.
The ATT service has been reliable and they deliver promised speeds at a great price. What else can you ask for?
**UPDATE**
Our service developed an annoying habit a few months ago of failing during any heavy rainstorm. It knocked out our phone service too when it would happen. After one too many useless phone reps that don't give a crap I decided to terminate the service and switch back to Comcast (used to be Adelphia) cable service. The service was great for a very long time but just went flaky on us at the end.
This is my 4th or 5th go around with Bellsouth. I'm fortunate to live in a area that is well served by both DSL and the local Cable monster so when one of them ticks me off, I just switch to the other 
This time around we had an issue where we would loose ALL phone services during a heavy rainstorm. Not really a DSL specific issue because the line was totally dead and as soon as we got dial tone back the service was up and running again perfectly. This happened twice to us. The second time I was a bit more cranky and demanded that the tech they were sending actually call me with what he/she found and the solution. Well I never got that call (shocker!!) but whatever they did seems to have done the trick as we've had two more VERY heavy rainstorms without a glitch.
I'm on the 6/512 service and consistenly see about 6.5/480 or so with a static IP via pppoe. Using my old trusty Westell 2200.
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 Review by jrs8084
member for 11.2 years, 4711 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 2.7 years ago
- Statesville,Iredell,NC
- $43 per month
- about 3 days
- BellSouth
- "Reliable"
- "None"
- "Very Good"
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8/2010: UVerse became available in this somewhat rural area (???) With the good service, I am thinking about it!
10/2009 : Updated to 6 Mbit service 6 months ago. No issues.
I already had DSL service, so install was nothing other than sending out a new modem. My old one was flakey, so I opted for a new (free, rebated) one. But, even though line was provisioned over in a day, I did have to wait two days for the modem as the old wouldn't work.
The call center was in Argentina, and while very helpful, the call quality was awful. My tech had a wireless headset, and it kept fading in out. The call was dropped a few times, but she always called back (!!) She made a mistake in her information about the bundling, and called me right back to correct it.
3 down, 384 up, Dynamic address, PPOPoE, very reliable. Free modem wired for either USB or ethernet.
Biggest positive-no contract.
Update: 9/2007: Service is still good, no changes since the SBC/at&t conversion. Service has gone down a few times, web site is useless in terms of tech support. But, overall, still very good.
Update 12/2008: Still good service.
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 Review by Mizzat
member for 10 years, 3265 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 2.8 years ago
- Atlanta,Dekalb,GA
- $47 per month
- about 3 days
- AT&T
- "Online order/changes is nice feature"
- "took some time to determine trouble"
- "Great company, great service"
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Uptime on DSL is incredible! Great service.
Update 2/11/07: Uptime is still incredible, I can't remember the last time the connection was out. There was a problem a year or so ago that caused the Internet connection to reset when the phone rang, but after checking and rechecking and replacing the filters I called AT&T and they came out and removed a bridgetap that was on my line and has been rock solid ever since!
I've since ordered Naked DSL and couldn't be happier. No change in DSL service.
Update 8/25/08: Still going strong, no real outages. I had a problem with the router that they came out and resolved for me, and still no problems since, I've even moved and got it hooked up and it is running just as good here.
Update 7/11/2009: Still going just fine, no problems the past year!
Update 8/3/2010: Uptime is still great! working from home has confirmed that this is a very reliable service.
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 Review by karthwyne
member for 10 years, 1582 visits, last login: 221 days ago
updated 2.9 years ago
- Atlanta,Dekalb,GA
- $42 per month
- about 1 days
- BellSouth
- "extremely stable"
- "tech support is just as bad as everyone else, but much better than comcast's was"
- "best choice available"
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I had ordered comcast again when I had moved, but they missed 3 appts, and didn't get it working on 3 others, for a total of a month before I ordered DSL. DSL was up the next day and cable still wasn't.
at my previous residence, comcast had four 20+hr outages within a month.
UPDATE 03/17/2008
it is over 2 years later, i haven't had a single outage and my connection rarely resets. my current connection has been up for over 2 months.
UPDATE 09/24/2008
I have still not had any outages, the connection is very stable.I have not had to call tech support for anything.
UPDATE 06/01/2009
I switched to DSL Direct (no home phone) a while back, and have continued to have no trouble with the service.
UPDATE 06/13/2010
I have updated to U-Verse 12M service. Very stable, no complaints.
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Review by hotpass105
member for 4.9 years, 101 visits, last login: 133 days ago
updated 2.9 years ago
- Cumming,Forsyth,GA
- Contract price not specified.
- (12 month contract)
- about 1 days
- "Speeds above 6mbit all the time occasionally 10+."
- "I don't have a DSL filter, and it disconnects if I get a call, but I don't use the home phone."
- "Much better then Verizon Mobile Broadband."
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Self installed.
6mbit $24/mth for a year
I'm using a Westell modem it's pretty old.
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 Review by jsturner
member for 12.3 years, 2511 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 2.9 years ago
- Loganville,Walton,GA
- $35 per month
- (6 month contract)
- about 16 days
- BellSouth
- "Speed, reliability, speed, knowledgeable installers, speed, speed, speed"
- "Lack of static IP"
- "Very fast, rock solid connection at a great price!"
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I signed up on Feb. 1, and the first available installation date was Feb. 15, which was not good for me, so I scheduled for the 16th between 8am and 11am. I had to have professional installation ($150) since I am an IFITL customer. Surprisingly, on the morning of the 14th (two days early) I looked outside and saw a BellSouth truck backed in my driveway. I went outside and the technician said that he was making sure the service was good up to my house. The next two days were torture knowing that I had high speed access all the way to my house, but not inside. I was tempted to sit outside with my laptop and hook straight into the NID, but I resisted, mainly because it was rainy, and I wasn't sure which pair in the NID to hook into.
On the morning of the 16th, the technician arrived at 9am. Having just run Cat5 cable to several rooms in my house, I showed the tech the best path from the NID to my home office, and I helped him run the cable (not that he needed help, but I wanted to get it hooked up as quickly as possible, and he was appreciative). I have 3 NT servers, 3 WinME machines, and 3 Win95 machines, all networked together (I am a computer consultant). I didn't want to use a dedicated broadband router because I wanted the flexibility/customizability of a software firewall/router. I would have preferred to use one of my NT servers, but the NTS drivers that BellSouth provides do not support NT server (they work with workstation, but not server). So I opted to install on one of the WinME systems. Since IFITL uses a direct Ethernet connection and no modem, the plan was to put a second (BellSouth-provided) Ethernet card in the system and then share the connection over the LAN. Although BellSouth doesn't officially provide network support, the technician also did commercial installs, and he was pretty network literate. However, after two hours of trying everything we could think of, we still couldn't get the machine to see both the LAN and the IFITL connection at the same time. Even though he didn't have to do anything to accomodate the LAN side, the tech made a valiant attempt to make it work. I must say he went above and beyond the call of duty. Incidentally, I finally did get the connection shared after talking with some people on this board..
After the tech got the IFITL connection working (by ditching the LAN connection), the speed test showed 2200 up and 380 down, but I think that was using the Interland speed test, which has always shown a faster speed than the others. My DLSR tests have been in the 1700-1800 range down and the 250-350 range up.
My only complaints would have to be a lack of support for NT server and for networking the connection, but you really can't blame them for that since this is theoretically a residential connection and not a business connection. I would also prefer to have a static IP so my subcontractors could more easily connect to my servers, but again, that is more of a business need than a residential need. I've only had the server drop the connection one time in the 10 days that I've had the service, and I was able to immediately reconnect. I am very happy with the service.
By the way, I rated tech support as a 3 simply because I have had no experience with their phone support. Since my problems involved networking the connection, I didn't even try calling them. Pre-sales information was average -- more technical information about IFITL vs. DSL for us techno-geeks would have been nice. And I have no complaints about the mail servers. They work as expected.
UPDATE 3/10/2001: I got the NTS drivers to work with my NT 4.0 Servers, so I took that out of the "Bad Points" section at the top. I have had the service for almost a month now, and the connection is rock solid (only 2 dropped connections and immediate reconnect was no problem).
UPDATE 3/20/2002: Wow, it's been over a year since I first got connected -- time flies almost as fast as my Internet connection!
In the past year, I have only had one outage that lasted more than an hour, and only a few outages at all for that matter. The one long outage turned out to be because someone had taken the cover off of the post by the curb and had pinched/damaged the wires when they replaced it. BellSouth couldn't get a truck to my house for 4 days. When they got here, the problem was found/fixed in less than 15 minutes.
By the way, my computers have changed a bit over the past year. I got tired of Windows ME locking up all of the time, so they now run Windows 2000 Advanced Server and RASPPPoE.
I still highly recommend BellSouth FastAccess.
UPDATE 8/22/2006 - It's been 5 1/2 years of rock solid connections. I've had only 4 outages in that time, and all but one were fixed within 24 hours.
Again, I've updated computers over the years. Now I have 9 systems, mostly running Win XP and 2003 Server, along with one Linux machine and one really old laptop running Win98.
UPDATE 10/13/2007 - Well, the system is bugging me to update my review, but there is really nothing to add. I've had no outages or other problems in the past year or so. I'm still a very happy customer. The only change is that now I am an AT&T FastAccess customer instead of a BellSouth FastAccess customer. No problems with the switchover so far.
UPDATE 5/26/2010 - It's been another couple of years, and we've moved during that time. There is no IFITL available at the new house, so I was switched to DSL. The speed is close to what I had before, but not quite as fast. There is not a faster DSL tier available in my area, but this is fast enough for what I do. I had no problems with the switchover. The modem/router arrived a day ahead of schedule, and everything worked perfectly when I hooked it up. Again, my tech support rating is 3 because I never use them, so it's what I consider a neutral score. I'm still a happy customer.
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 Review by FROSTY
member for 12.7 years, 3533 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
updated 3 years ago
- Pinson,Jefferson,AL
- $40 per month
- (3 month contract)
- about 45 days
- BellSouth
- "24/7 solid connection and consistent performance"
- "Spam filtering needs improvement"
- "Great service"
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Hi all,
I signed up for Bellsouth's DSL service sometime during first week of July 2000. They told me I would receive my self-install kit by July 28. Although, the line test was never performed until August 7. I finally received my self-install kit on August 17. Nowadays, the process is much faster. I've seen friends order DSL, receive the kit the very next week, and the the service be 'live'.
During my first month of service, the DSL has been down for only one day. Amazingly, the tech I spoke with was more than willing to solve my problem. Considering everyone here says Bellsouth's tech support is horrible. The support tech contacted a line tech and they performed a truck load of diagnostics on my phone line. They came to the conclusion that my packets were reaching the CO, but the CO was sending packets that never reached my modem. "Interesting" the tech says. The tech then told me the problem was in the CO and they would have it fixed within 24 hours. Two hours later, my DSL service was working again. Not bad Bellsouth, not bad at all.
As I mentioned earlier, I really wanted the Alcatel SpeedTouch Home DSL modem but I refused to pay the $150. I found this modem for half the price Bellsouth wanted on Ebay. I still use the STH today, but it has since been converted to a STPro. In Pro mode, the modem can do PPPoA + NAT or PPPoA to DHCP Spoofing. Spoofing passes the WAN IP directly to a DHCP client, like a router set to 'Obtain IP Automatically' on the WAN.
UPDATE:
Basic Summary 11/28/01:
Have enjoyed BSFA for over 1 year and 4 months. First year was in another city, the CO had a Redback, and the DSL operation was flawless. Moved to a new city 4 months ago, the CO has a BBG, and was plagued with sync loss, PPPoE authentication errors, and etc. NetTech and a ST Tech removed several bridgetaps, which solved those problems. DSL service has been great ever since.
UPDATE:04/02/02
Heavy flooding this past weekend. No sync loss, no dropped IP.
UPDATE: 10/22/02
It's official. I'm a home owner with DSL.
Moved into a house at the beginning of 10/2002
UPDATE: 02/12/03
It's been over 2 months since the new 'BRIB' (Bellsouth Regional Internet Backbone) was implemented. IMHO, it suxs. Routing has changed. Instead of being routed to Atlanta, GA for peering onto the Internet, now routed to New Orleans, THEN to Dallas or Houston for the peering.
UPDATE: 03/05/03
WOOHOO! Finally, routing has been changed back to Atlanta.
UPDATE: 10/09/03
The Bellsouth 'MailGaurd' SPAM filtering system has finally shown it's worth. IMHO, It works rather well. Routing is excellent as it should be. Combined with practically 0 (zero) downtime. BSFA is still the best ISP in my area.
UPDATE: 08/24/04
Still using the STPro in PPPoA to DHCP Spoofing with a Linksys SR81 router (WAN connection type set to DHCP). While I qualify for the new Extreme 3.0 Mbps service, I refuse to upgrade because of the manditory static IP. Which is nothing more than a sales/marketing requirement. Not a techincal requirement.
UPDATE: 05/05/05
Still working great. Static IP is now optional for the 3.0 service, yet I don't qualify anymore. LOL!
UPDATE: 08/23/07
Still working great. I've been on the 3.0M service for over a year now. I have the option for the 6.0M service. I do want more upload than 384k with the 3.0 service. Yet would have to pay for the 6.0 service just to get 512k upload. So, I'm still holding off on paying $5 more just for a 128K boost in upload cause more download is not my concern.
Current equipment is a Netopia 2241N modem in bridged ethernet mode coupled with a Linksys RVS4000 router in PPPoE mode.
As of May 4th 2010, I am no longer a BSFA / AT&T DSL Internet customer. We moved to an area serviced by Windstream FTTH..
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 Review by vrp
member for 10.4 years, 4161 visits, last login: 42 days ago
updated 3 years ago
- terra
- $43 per month
- about 4 days
- BellSouth
- "fast and reliable"
- "Asynchronous DSL"
- "Morton's fork"
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I switched to BellSouth FastAccess DSL Xtream 3.0 Service around August, 2006. The so-called cable-modem came within 3-4 days and by that time the DSL line was already activated. Now around Mid-December I am upgrading to FastAccess DSL Xtream 6.0 Service as my personal experience with this service provider has been nice. Hope it stays like that in future too.
Previously I was getting broadband service from I-55.com, which later merged with a company named Xfone.
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added on October 3rd, 2007:
... It stayed like that, as hoped earlier ... 
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added on April 6th, 2008:
... same status ...
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added on October 9th, 2008:
... same status ...
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added on May 29th, 2009:
... same status ...
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added on Sept 20th, 2009:
... same status ...
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added on April 27th, 2010
... same status ...
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Review by powrogers
member for 5.8 years, 3 visits, last login: 3 years ago
lodged 3 years ago
- Nashville,Davidson,TN
- Contract price not specified.
- BellSouth
- "Consistent 3Mb DSL connection for years"
- "Online signup TERRIBLE, online account access mediocre"
- "It's fine"
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Really the only reasonable option for me as I don't want TV. I have the 3Mb DSL and local phone service (land line) - together this is $63/mo including taxes and whatnot. Ordering and installation wasn't problematic. I use my own equipment. Worst experience was when I accidentally used my username/password at someone else's house and then couldn't log in at home. They eventually debugged this over the phone, but only after several days and two or three different technician visits.
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 Review by jmelcher
member for 7.2 years, 423 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
updated 3.1 years ago
- Augusta,Columbia,GA
- $24 per month
- about 14 days
- "Reliable, cost effective"
- "Took 2 weeks to get service activated"
- "Good value for the money"
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Using AT&T FastAccess® DSL Xtreme 6.0
6MB down, 512K up and every speed test has it right on the money. Switched to DSL from Cable, as Comcast wanted $10 for basic cable, then $29.95 for Internet. Albeit it was faster, I didn't feel $39.95 was worth it being faster. DSL has been fast enough for 99% of my Internet usage. I upload a lot of photos so I can notice the difference there, but that's about the only time I do notice it.
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