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View Full Version : at&t dsl *a rant of sorts*



farlo
08-02-2011, 02:36 PM
in an effort to lower my bills at home, ive changed some of my providers for services. i previously had a bundle with cox for tv/phone/internet. i decided at the beginning of july to change services to directv and at&t.

directv is working out just fine, no problems there.

at&t, where do i start? services were to start on 07/14 no technicians came to test the lines like i was advised. get email order is completed. when i get home from work all i get is static on the lines, cant setup modem because of their lines. I called customer services Friday, they said they would get a tech out monday 8am-7pm to check the line. the weekend passes monday comes tech says its on their end, they need to get someone to dig the lines up and repair it. a couple days go by and they spray their markers on my yard for reference, but never end up digging up the yard, apparently it was at the pole before going through the yard. telephone works now, internet is still having issues connecting and setting up account. I call tech support again, they cant see my modem, and its flashing in the dsl light. they mess with some of their settings and it connects.

I set up the connection and create my un/pw, after confirming that its working. they advise me to check speeds on their site, which reports is at 5.8(close enough to the 6) my modem reports connected speed at 3.2, and speedtest reports close to the same, right at 3mbs. i figure its about 6 at night so alot of people in the neighborhood may be on and that could be slowing me down so ill try again later, i check it at 11 or so and its even slower. i try the next day after i get off of work and its around 3mb again and the connection is randomly dropping, going back to the flashing dsl light indicating no connection. I get frustrated and call tech support again.

the tech i get this time is pretti helpful, does alot of diagnostic testing, and decides that the connection i have at at&t's switch is going out, so they'll have a tech fix that locally. on monday 8am-7pm. Gives me a 10$ per month discount for the next 12 months because of the issues ive been having.

tech supposed gets me fixed up, internet works ok, speeds still top out around 3.8mbs, tech say the neighborhood probably maxes out there, and suggests i go to the 3mb speed instead of 6 for stability issues. he basically says the neighborhood cant support that speed so you will have random disconnects, speed is supposedly downgraded today, so ill see if it works this time.

x88x
08-02-2011, 03:08 PM
i figure its about 6 at night so alot of people in the neighborhood may be on and that could be slowing me down
Not applicable to DSL. Cable has that problem because it's a shared last-mile line, so the more people along the line are using it, the less any one person can get. DSL, on the other hand, is a dedicated last-mile line, and it limited instead by the quality of the phone lines and your proximity to the local node. When the tech said that your neighborhood couldn't support more than 3.8Mbps, that's probably why; either the wiring in your neighborhood is old and introduces a lot of resistance (a lot of older neighborhoods with buried wiring have this problem) or you're just too far away from the local node to get any faster service.

Sucks about how much crap you had to go through to get it finally working though. IDK if we just have bad luck, but I also had a lot of trouble getting mine set up when I had DSL. Seems like it's just a lot more complicated, less controlled, system than cable or fibre.

farlo
08-02-2011, 03:12 PM
if i cant get everything functional, ill just go back to cox for internet, i never had any issues with them.

mDust
08-02-2011, 03:21 PM
I had SBC phone service ~7-8 years ago that was overpriced garbage and there was no way in hell I'd have tried their DSL. Funny story: SBC at the time had <10% customer satisfaction rating so they bought AT&T and rebranded themselves as AT&T. It's really still the same knowledge-lacking thieves with the same crap policies and service. I'm surprised they even got it working for you.

Good luck with them.

farlo
08-03-2011, 09:47 AM
apparently that wasnt enought to get me a stable connection. im done with AT&T and im going to cancel them and go back to Cox for good reliable internets.

Cale_Hagan
08-03-2011, 02:19 PM
yeah, i have had so many issues.... with att. i hope you didn't sign up for a promotional one, they have gnarly contracts. :facepalm:

farlo
08-03-2011, 02:55 PM
i got a promo rate, but luckily there's no contract with it.

dr.walrus
08-03-2011, 06:31 PM
Not applicable to DSL.

Less so, but it definitely is applicable. In the UK especially (with our high population density), we have massive problems with oversubscription of the network switches at exchanges - be (https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/bevalue) are the only consumer ISP I know who will upgrade an exchange once it hits 70% bandwidth capacity.