AT&T Southeast → ATT Speed Tests Lie?

My BS ADSL tier is 1.5Mbs down, the ATT speed test page
at att dot com slash speedtest consistently measures 1.27 to 1.33
and my actiontec modem says I'm connected at 1472 kbps down/
256 kbps up BUT every single speed test I've tried here at Dslreports.com (all six flash and four java tests) as well as six or so other speed tests elsewhere all measure my connection at 400 to 750 kbps down (and around 200 up).
No wonder it typically takes 5 minutes of buffering to watch a 2 minute youtube flick!
In all honesty, it's not always this bad. I get decent speeds about one week out of every month...
So boyz and girlz, don't believe that att speed test.
It seems att is measuring the speed between our dropbox and the att server but once we go beyond the att server and into the real world we're wading in the mud.

Decisions decisions..Clearwire or Comcast...uhm

If you want ulcers, massive headaches, spikes in high blood pressure, an empty wallet, and no service for hours at a time choose Clearwire.

I guess you are tired of running tests, but would you consider running the speedtests at testmy »testmy.net and ispgeeks »www.ispgeeks.com and posting the results? I find these to be the best for getting accurate results with my AT&T DSL.

I had the same frustration as you and was fortunate that my area was upgraded to 6.0 Mbps DSL service a year or so ago. The improvement for YouTube and other video was worth the 33% cost increase from 1.5.

I think BBR should just remove their speed tests. They haven't been reliable in years.

Other resources like speediest.net or testmy.net are better. Even AT&T's test is better on my Road Runner connection.

I'd prefer to avoid the massive headaches, already have the hypertension and the near empty wallet and no service would make me "postal"..
I'll check out testmynet and ispgeeks for kicks but I'm seriously down on ATT as it is.
Unfortunately ADSL in my area WILL NOT BE UPGRADED
I'm stuck at the 1.5 tier due to old copper and their reluctance to deploy fiber from the dslam to the crossbox. My only alternative with ATT is uverse..my next door neighbor has it and either his TV works or his internet works but they refuse to play well together and it seems there's always a truck at the crossbox or in front of his house.

While I've read all kinds of nasty reviews about clear, I'm less than 2 miles from their local tower and I figure (hope) a yagi aimed just right would light up all the lights..I'm still researching.
Just tested again..the results are *depressing*
ispgeeks: 346kbps down 153 up
quality of service 58%
testmynet: 366 Kbps down 134 Kbps up

Those are very bad results. Have you ever posted in the AT&T Direct Forum? »AT&T Direct.

The issues with Clear are a combination of lousy technology, very overcrowded towers, and severe throttling. You could put up the best directional parabolic antenna, connected with the finest coaxial cable, augmented with an excellent bidirectional amplifier, and aimed with the best of care. So you get a great signal. Even with that you will be subjected to severe throttling, that would give you no better than you have now with AT&T DSL.

Comcast is a cable company, and cable companies can be cantankerous beasts. But, Comcast has deployed improved DOCSIS 3.0 technology over the majority of its service area. It came out good in recent tests for delivering advertised speeds, considering what other cable companies are doing. Yes, Comcast has a monthly data transfer limit or cap. I would think it is better to have relatively consistent service close to what is the advertised speed and have to be aware of usage, than to have to deal with throttled speeds, that are enforced for weeks, which are 10% of what was advertised.

Bad results indeed. No, I haven't posted in the att direct forum. I have a pal or two that worked for BS or still do that briefed me.

They tell me it's a matter of too many fiber to old copper connections, uverse, and old equipment all around. Everytime a new customer gets uverse in my neighborhood my internet speed goes in the mud
or stays fast but intermittent and noisy until I bitch enough and they give me back my pair or reset me at the CO. Years back, during the good old BS days
I had 'em tag my pair and everything worked as good as it could on ancient copper- until ATT come to town...been a yoyo ever since, especially after uverse.
Things will be fine for weeks, even months, then right after I see a ATT truck camped out by the crossbox down the street everything turns to crapola.

I Clearly see what you mean re Clear now, I read up some more..it's looking more and more like I'll be going to comcast, I think charter serves this area too.
Comcast's cap doesn't bother me very much. The illusory idea that clear is uncapped was appealing out of principle, but I now know that they throttle, but a 250 gig cap is no big deal to me practically...I'm a light user, comparatively..I just don't want to waste time

Should have wrote ATT speeds are a lie....

I had 3Mbps / 512 speeds before and even at optimal connection [could get 2.8-3 anytime], youtube videos still buffers, even hulu, netflix etc...

mind you, I have a new house where network connections were properly laid out.

When the caps announcement came and they tried to pitch U-verse to me, I jump shipped to Comcast and got CC Biz starter 12/2. Now, I can happily stream online without buffering and that's even with 4 users all using the connection altogether.

If you were consistently getting over 90% of your advertised up to speed, you were doing average for AT&T. The YouTube video buffering problem, which I experienced, relates to the "quality" of the video. Watching at 240p has much less buffering than at 1080p. YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and other video feeds were envisioned to be transmitted over higher end ADSL and DOCSIS data rates of say 12 Mbps or more. After all, the wireline telephone companies were talking about future upgrades beyond 12 Mbps for their customers, IF they got the tax cuts, subsidies, deregulation, and whatnot. The cable companies could routinely delivered such data rates. Hulu and Netflix were designed to reduce the cost of using cable television. DSL was not a concern.

...yeah but then they could drop my account, I read that memo.
You can't be rude (whatever that may mean) to the customer service agents or techs either or they'll take your pudding away.

I have to keep telling these folks "it's not my inside wiring"...
Yup, I'm going to Comcast..but only for technical reasons 'cause they smell like monopoly too.
It'll be great to be able to multitask online w/o things taking for ever..this is getting reminiscent of dial-up, PC-Link, AOL, and Netzero.

I haven't consistently got over 90% of my "up to" ever since ATT took over. With BS, sure. After ATT, never. After Uverse deployment in my neck of gotham south if I get 70% it's 3AM.
There's a bottle neck.
Everything takes much longer to load than it should, not just youtube flicks Netflix ETC.
ADSL2 and + would be cool but even just plain ADSL
can stream a youtube well when the routers at the CO are working well and aren't bottled up, I've seen it done.
But they can't get their uverse together either.
ATT doesn't want to spend money on their infrastructure and nobody at ATT seems to be paying much attention to the customer's needs either.
Right now, somebody following this thread and who is apparently an Uverse rep left me an IM to discuss my Uverse account.
If he had been paying attention he would know that I don't have a Uverse account.