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Review by porqe 
Posted: 3.7 years ago
member for 4.3 years, 9 visits, last login: 3.4 years ago
 Houston,Harris,TX
 $63 per month (12 month contract)
 about 17 days
 Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
 "SBC alternative (thats all they are)"
 "no one answers phone, Dan (sysadmin) made my online date 17 days from ordering messup. hesitant to accept me as a customer."
 "2 people working tech support, main sysadmin messed up my order, he said it would we'd be set for tonight."
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ordered Oplink after speaking with Dan (sysadmin) and he was hesitant to want to accept me as a customer because at my previous house I was not satisfied with the transfer rates I had also tried to expedite the order by talking to SBC in which case they got upset about. Dan suggested a number of DSL providers I needed 6mbit down and wanted low latency and hated the corporate Time Warner Roadrunner other than its performance when I’m not dealing with a technical issue due to their fiddling with my network. I received the Modem, Ethernet cable, and power supply and filters in a timely fashion. I had hooked everything up so that I would know when SBC turned on the DSL line. When I first spoke to Dan over the phone he explicitly told me that I qualified for 6mbit down and 608 up. Dan set me up for 6mbit down and 768 up which was his mistake which would have cost me an extra week of downtime because I only qualified for 6mbit / 608 just like Dan told me. The service was so poor at ONLY 7900 FT from a remote terminal that wireless computers on my home network were unable to receive connectivity. I was also told by Ryan (admin) that I had problems last time I ordered 6mbit so if I cancelled I would not be able to order again which is irrelevant because I moved in a brand new house in a brand new neighborhood far away from the one I originally had. There may be a few people behind the curtains but the only two live people there to speak with were Dan and Ryan. They claim 24 hour support however I could never reach a live human being after hours. The quality of the treatment I received this round of Oplink service was very poor compared to my initial sign up with Oplink until they turned sour. If you want low latency and the price is right I recommend SBC online dsl specials where the prices are cheaper, for same - QUALIFED service and you actually get to talk to people who care and know what they are talking about. status -- cancelled dsl order on notification of it taking another week to get Dans order right.
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Review by skquinn
UPDATED: 6.3 years ago
member for 6.8 years, 41 visits, last login: 5.5 years ago
Houston,Harris,TX
$71 per month
about 10 days
Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Southwestern Bell
"Somewhat friendly staff"
"Underhanded way of handling billing disuptes"
"There are better values out there"
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UPDATE 2003-07-09: After being out of town for a week, I return to find my service shut off, my e-mail account inaccessible, and I get a call from an attorney claiming to represent Optimal Link who was trying to collect a very inflated balance (nearly $400, I actually owe less than half of that after returning the modem). I can no longer recommend this company for Internet service. I'm currently considering NET1.net and NetStar among others.
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I placed my order shortly after Christmas (December 27 or so). I opted for the Surfer package (4 static IPs) at $65.95/month.
The day came, and we were unable to get sync due to the fact we were trying to use an old Alcatel 1000 ADSL bridge (modem) and the jack was wired wrong. Fortunately the SBC tech fixed this problem for us as well as correcting the VPI/VCI settings.
The old Alcatel works okay for about 3-4 days (at that time I really didn't care all that much about download rate, so "okay" is 160 kbit/sec down) then starts dropping offline. So, we call tech support, drop by the office (which is about 5 miles from me) and pick up a Speedstream 5360. It works okay for a few days, but it starts dropping packets. At first the problem was attributed to the en masse migration of DirecTV DSL customers (something like 5 times the normal rate of new signups) but the problem persisted, and I was lucky that I had the chance to go to my mom's house (she has IDSL through Speakeasy) and look at what comes across the wire with a packet sniffer. Hmm, "unknown ICMP (malformed or obsolete)" doesn't look right, no wonder we have packet loss.
Fast forward to yesterday afternoon. SBC tech comes by, checks the line out, everything looks okay. Two possible causes of failure remain: the hub (which is needed because my current roommate has a computer hooked up) and the bridge (modem) itself. The first replacement modem also failed. Fortunately it failed before the tech left, so he replaced it with yet another which seems to be working great as I write this. "Great" means in the vicinity of 768 kbit/sec down, download throughput of about 79 kbytes/sec, and ping times of about 70-80 ms to the gateway.
As of this date, I will happily recommend Optimal Link to my friends interested in an ADSL connection. The only real downside is that Optimal Link partners only with SBC, so no SDSL or IDSL (but in fairness, they do offer T-1 lines).
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 Review by scottbell
UPDATED: 6.8 years ago
member for 7.2 years, 358 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Houston,Harris,TX
$49 per month (month by month)
about 5 days
Southwestern Bell
"Connection stays up most of the time"
"Capped Connection"
"Watch what you download"
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ANOTHER UPDATE:
My account has been canned. Read below this review (in the comments area) for details.
I am now using SBC Yahoo and have had no issues (bandwidth or otherwise).
UPDATE:
I talked to Optimal Link some more and I brokered a deal with them. Basically, I hadn't realized they outsourced their Usenet server to supernews. This hits them pretty hard if you download a lot (unlike other ISP's who have their own usenet servers). They said it'd be ok to download whatever I like during off hours (11->8). Seemed pretty fair. I wish I had known this from the start though.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I gave these guys a really decent review until I got an email from the sysadmin regarding bandwidth. Apparently, the 500MB bandwidth "guaranteed" by Optimal Link I think is effectively a bandwidth cap. Use much more than 500 MB and I believe they throttle your bandwidth back to 128 kbs (little better than modem levels). I haven't seen this with any other ISP I've ever used (including Southwestern Bell and Time Warner). I think you should read the fine print before dealing with these folks.
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