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I'm a user of Bell Atlantic (Verizon) DSL service (former ISDN user) and I support 10 remote users in the DC Metro. I'm also a Tier-2 Tech support Rep for our company and a liason for Verizon. Based upon my work in the telecom industry, my contacts at Verizon and I agree that DSL is not up to standards.

The most troubling issue is the inadequate training of Tier-1 Techsupport. Most of the staffing do not have any knowledge on DSL. Most of the staff are from dial-up support. It's very frustrating to wait at least 60 min to contact a tier-1 rep and it takes an additional 60 min to explain the problem to them and an additional 60 min to get to a tier-2 rep.

Another problem is the onsite installers. Verizon does not want to spend extra funds to send onsite installers and believe that just plugging in the DSL modem will work. To my experience, in most areas, you need to install a signal amplifier - available only if an onsite installer is dispatched. The signal to the homes in Rockville area are so weak that DSL would not work. For example, at one time, I had both DSL and ISDN. When my ISDN was working (online), the DSL would stop working. Even though the lines are different, the interference from my ISDN was enough to prevent my DSL from working. NOTE: Make sure your home is wired using at least 2-pair wires (4 wires).

Next issue is connection/speed. From my tests, the upload speed is close to 9600bps (faster to upload via modem) and download ranges from 284kbps to 500kbps. At times, there are brown-outs. When it rains, it pours. Brownouts are very common and should be expected.

Overall - very good sales people but very bad followup. I am always hopeful that the service would improve but since I'm a nobody -- home user -- I am not expecting anything would change in the near future.

you are partially correct with the exception of signal amplifiers which do not exist for adsl, idsl has extend repeaters but adsl does not. As for the company not wanting to spend funds on their installers, the real issue is that a large number of the public pc's are in marginal working order and the telco's do not want to be responsible repairing a wide variety of potential equipment problems.

I am an engineer (MCSE/MCP/CNA/CNE) with over 12 years experience in the industry....these people need to get out of the business. BADSL/VERIZON is the most unethical business I have ever dealth with. They continue to lie to the consumer and cheat them any way possible. I have spoken to many engineers and former employees of this company who have left or are looking to leave because they just can not stand the unethical behavior anymore...a big paycheck is not enough for most people to turn their heads away from the consumer fraud that continues to damage not only the industry but other companies that need access to the physical wires to compete.

BellAtlantic is not only giving up resolving connectivity issues but they are now resorting to sale of personal information to third parties in order to bolster revenue for a failing DSL business. They continue to loose money on the service and need to find other resources of revenue to keep the joke of the industry running. I purchased DSL in March and since it has been live I have never had an operating service of acceptable quality. Frequent lock-ups, server down time and inability to route, send or receive email and hundreds of SPAM email messages later...and they point blank state that "it must be an operating system problem"...what crap! I have set up 3 different workstations as stand alone. Each worstation has a removable drive and I have 3 drives for each workstation with NT, 98 and 95 installed. I have tested each workstation with each operating system and the same results are consistent and repeatable...system crashes and lock-ups are the biggest problem. They can not say that I have an operating system problem or that the problem is related to using a LAN. I did this extensive testing to prove a point...that they are selling a defective product and lying to the consumer. In addition, I have confirmation from thrid parties who have purchased internet profile information from BellAtlantic to send mass email advertisements from get rich quick schemes to illegal snooping software vendors. BellAtlantic has tried to change their perception in the public forums by changing thier name...but the public is not that stupid and they have a memory. No one is stupid enough to think that a simple name change will effect the unethical commercial motivations of a cheating and lying business. I urge anyone who has experienced connectivity problems that BellAtlantic refuses or can not resolve or has experienced the onslaught of SPAM from sites that get your private information directly from Hell Atlantic to contact me to initiate a class action law suit. These people can not be above the law. The PUC and FCC will not do anything until a law suit is initiated and the pressure from press and goverment consumer protection agencies becomes high. I can be reached at alanmazer@email.com and I urge all those who are fed up with the lies and cheating and unethical manner in which BellAtlantic continues to do business to contact me or thier own legal councel.

I have documented proof of BADSL cheating and lying ways...their own email to me admits they have problems. In addition, I have names and phone numbers of personnel who have lyied and continue to lie to the consumers. Example, simple enough to correct the error but they refuse....640/90 is what they sell but the equipment they use can not provide it. They can not provide better than 608/81 and if you get 80% of that you are very lucky no matter the tweaks you use...it is a physical impossibility to provide 640/90...but they continue to sell it that way because of market perception...again...more proof of their willingness to deceive the consumer when telling the truth is simple enough...even thier own people know it is a lie but they are forced to tell it the BADSL way...why do you think they use dynamic IP assignment?...because they continue to over-sell the capacity of the system...and then they try to play catch up later...but only after customers start cancelling or complaining....this is just bad business and worse ethics...

BADSL is the only provider using the Westell modems (that I know of) and they know the USB and PCI devices are defective yet they continue to sell them and worse yet they charge you for the shipping costs when you eventually return them as defective. Not only is the modem of no use for any other service than BADSL but it has a reliability issue and may be part of the connectivity problems such as system lock-ups and inability to route.

Please, if anyone out there is experiencing the same kind of unethical behaviour from these people and want to pursue it in the courts, contact me at alanmazer@email.com I don't know how long I can keep the service...I want to drop it but I have no leverage if I do. Once they agree to refund my last 6 months of service fees and the cost of the modem I will drop the service but not until I make my best effort to bring this to the public.

alanmazer@email.com

take note:...BADSL does not even maintain thier own mail servers...they farm it out just like technical support. If you have a problem with your email you can not get assistance from BADSL you must deal with mail.com...and those guys are also thrird party...in addition, they sell the advertisements on the web pages and everywhere possible, why charge the customer at all?...they make more money of banners and advertisements then on service fees.

Another issue, I can get another dsl provider eccept they can not provide the service until BADSL releases the license on my line which they refuse to do so, then they have to tag the line for the other provider which takes months due to the backlog..remember the stike?...so, I must cancell my access through BADSL and wait up to 3 months for the line to be re-tagged for another provider and all the time be without service...then they purchased one of the other providers to elliminate competition....monopolizing the dsl market..others can not get acccess to CO's to install routers without court orders...

UNETHICAL LIARS and CHEATS...

again....if anyone wants to take it to the courts, a class action is the only way...contact me at alanmazer@email.com

it is now Friday afternoon...they lied again...no one called and the service is now worse than ever...can not route...system locks and all the promises they made were just lies and more lies...it will not stop until legal action is taken..is there no one who wants thier problems resolved even if it takes legal action...I urge you all to contact me via email at alanmazer@email.com...lets put this company on the record...make them pay us all back for the lies and lack of ethics...

What was the point of putting all that again?

i know your problems buddy that is why i ended verizon after 15 days because of the problems they constantly had in the new york area
i switched to a cable modem and so far it is great there is no down time
as for the dsl, as long as you can put up with the tech support and the constant down time you'll be ok
but try other options as long as you do not sign any contracts you'll be ok

I am not the only one when I say that Verison DSL formerly Bell Atlantic DSL are the worst handlers of DSL connectivity. I have lived in 2 cities, and have asked BellAtlantic to install connections to the 4 residences I have lived in. The only success story I ever had was my first request to Bell in August of 99. Back then the IPs were all static so I did not have to go through too much trouble to fix the problem myself. Then I moved to another residence not to long after, and boy did they take their merry old time. It took me 2 months to get connected and not only was the order to live time poor, the connection was terrible, I would get downtime atleast 10 times a week. This is still back in Nov of 99. Then I moved to NY and ordered DSL in two places still in the vicinity of NYC. My connection time in Manhattan was excellent, i had my DSL up and running within 1 month. But the service was poor, the DSL people decided to run the self installation kit with a dialer to authenticate my request for IP. This was their infamous WinPoET dialer, which in itself was a minirouter thus stealing away precious packet overhead space, requiring all my client boxes to reduce their MTU settings. Not only that my DSL connection would be booted off every 2-3 hrs. Which as you can imagine is terrible for downloading large files. There would be constant outages, I can count the number of days that the service would not be interrupted with my fingers. Then I moved to one of the other five boroughs of NYC, and requested a DSL connection, I should have learned by now, but I still went with Bell Atlantic, now Verison. Needless to say this was a nightmare. I had to wait almost 3 months for the connection. After the connection was finally turned on without any warning, but my mere perseverance to try the connection everyday, I had so much trouble trying to setup the connection with their infamous software account setup. Needless to say 8 hrs later, I was able to get to a tech support that knew what I was talking about the previous 3 techsupports had not idea what I was talking about. I finally get my account and started using it, but only this time, the WinPoET dialer would keep me connected only long enough to finish 2 or 3 songs in one of those shoutcast stations. It was terrible. The service went down so often that I had no choice but to just ignore trying until the next day, and hope the connection would remain good for atleast a couple of hours, but it doesn't who am I kidding it is Bell Atlantic in NYC the guys who never ask permission from the local authorities to line maintenance in the middle of the streets and cut their own wires by accident. I have yet to see one day that the DSL service is not interuppted. But still hopeful that Verison will wake up and stop lying to their customers that the downtimes were scheduled, and please give a time frame of repair, post it on the web or something that way we know when the service is back up.