It sounds to me as though the relative age of the equipment in a given service may significantly impact the quality of service subscribers receive.
My experience here, pre-ATT bundle, was with Charter Communications. After taking a job that provided me the chance to work from a home office, I decided to add Charter's telephone service to get unlimited long distance instead of switching everything over to AT&T. That proved to be the worst mistake I've ever made with any kind of utility-related decision.
My home security system activated multiple times in the middle of the night when Charter's phone service burped. The first time, I woke up to hear the alarm going off for the first time ever. Rather than waiting for someone from Central Control to check in, I decided to call 911. Imagine my reaction when I found the phone line dead. I grabbed a handgun and slowly made my way downstairs from the bedroom, only to find everything locked up tight and undisturbed - except for my sleep and my blood pressure.
Service calls here did nothing to mitigate the problem, which I solved by taking everything to AT&T. That being said, my 6-meg DSL has delivered as advertised, and it doesn't seem to suffer the periodic lapses of service that were pretty consistent here with Charter's high-speed.
I don't have an HD package for TV, but I am very pleased with the satellite service through Dish Network so far. It gives me NASA TV, for example, which Charter doesn't even offer (or, rather, didn't as of the date I ended longstanding service with them). Same way with NFL Network, which Charter pulled after making it available for about 30 days shortly after it launched.
I haven't any filtering issues at all here related to DSL, including with the security system.
I suppose there is a mix of good experiences and bad with the phone comapny and with cable. I hope you end up pleased, whichever way you decide to go. I'm really glad I made the switch here to AT&T.
73,
Tim -------------- Original message from RFI-EMI-GUY Rhyolite@NETTALLY.COM: --------------
Perry; I have had recent experience with ATT DSL. About 8 months ago My wife decided to change our COMCAST cable service to an ATT DSL/DishNetwork bundle. (She did this w/out consulting me!) She was assured by ATT that the DSL service would provide the same or better than 6 gig service we were enjoying (trouble free) from Comcast. In fact ATT made a big point that using a cable modem we were sharing bandwidth (you still do with DSL upstream of the DSLAM). Truth be told, ATT could not deliver 6 gig service to our home 15,000 feet from the DSLAM. The copper network is very old and deteriorated. In fact after having troubles: 1) they wanted to downgrade the GOS, 2) They no longer offered the 6 gig GOS to my block. I also spent a lot of time rewiring the phones in the house to deal with DSL filtering issues. ATT's real reason to market the DSL/Dishnetwork bundle is to pull customers from the local cable service in anticipation of their fiber to home video service that they are slowly rolling out. I would avoid ATT DSL unless you have a DSLAM in your neighborhood and you have neighbors who are satisfied with the service. Otherwise, steer clear. Also the DishNetwork service has been a bit troublesome in performance and HD channel packages. So now I am back with Comcast for internet and stuck with Dishnetwork HDTV for 10 more months.
Also ATT has blocked usenet binaries groups so if you were getting manuals, files and schematics from ABSE or similar newsgroups, you are out of business.
Has anyone on the BBS had any experience with AT&T's DSL Internet service????
I will be using a Apple IMac computer and the people here in town don't seem to know anything about a Mac computer.
I would also like to know if upgrading to DSL will cause any interference on my TS2000????
Perry WB8OTH--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT "The RFI-EMI-GUY"©
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
"Follow The Money" ;-P
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