An ISP of their own (was RE: [rescue] Being jobless)

[Bill Bradford]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 10:54:18PM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> As far as I know (at least in California, under Pacific Bell) there is
> no free local calling on ISDN.  EVERY CALL, voice or data, local or
> long-distance, is a toll call.
> Other RBOCs may, of course, vary.

DSL in Texas (SBC) is flat-rate (except for long-distance of course).

~$65/month nailed-up 128K isdn home connections ahoy!  (this was before
cablemodems and DSL became widespread).

Lessee..  my "broadband history":
pre-1996: static IP dialup (I worked for ISPs)
1996-98: 128k ISDN to texas.net [0]
1998-99: 64/128k ISDN to quadralay.com [1]
1999-99: "Early Bird" subscriber to Roadrunner cablemodem (600K/sec!) [2]
1999-01: 1.5M/128k ADSL to jump.net [3]
2001-02: Time Warner/Earthlink cable modem (2M/384k) [4]
2002-03: 1.5M/128k, then 1.5M/256k SBC ADSL [5]
2003-:   Time Warner cable modem (2M/384k) [6]

[0] worked for them at the time.  free; they paid for the circuit
[1] they had an extra ISDN PRI, rented out spare channels for $50/month to 
    clueful users.  "here's the number, give me your SPIDs, here's your IPs".  
    No support other than that; it worked great. 64k nailed; dynamic to 128 
    when needed.
[2] 600K/sec to local ISPs they peered with - until they capped it at 2M/384.
    Had to go back to DSL for a while when I moved.
[3] I worked for jump.net part-time.  Free DSL, then I kept it when I left.
    Got tired of horrible customer service from ALGX when they bought Jump.
[4] Worked fine at first, they had bad network infrastructure problems that 
    made me bail to DSL.
[5] Worked great, but I got tired of paying $80/month for the static IP package,
    which was the only non-PPPoE option.
[6] Had it for 3-4 months now, they fixed all the old problems, works *great*.

Bill

-- 
bill bradford
mrbill at mrbill.net
austin, texas