[rescue] Highspeed access

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

The Bells have a very big reputation for avoiding DSL when ISDN is
available. They are accused of forcing customers to use $ISDN$ rather than
cheaper DSL.


~ -----Original Message-----
~ From: James Rice [mailto:jrice at texoma.net]
~ Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 8:49 AM
~ To: rescue at sunhelp.org
~ Subject: Re: [rescue] Highspeed access
~ 
~ 
~ <soapbox>I live only 21 miles from downtown Dallas, but 
~ SWBell told me 
~ last month not to hold my breath waiting on DSL roll out 
~ here.  Hell, we 
~ can't even get voicemail. When I built my house , we were 
~ promised DSL 
~ by November.  I should have had a clue when it took three 
~ months to get 
~ analog dialtone, but I had faith.  I signed up on the email noitce 
~ program and waited.  All this was in 1999.
~ 
~ Then this June I had received an email that DSL was now 
~ available in my 
~ neighborhood, so I called and scheduled an installation.  I 
~ had been on 
~ ISDN at a cost of $110.00 (ISP and phone line charges)  per 
~ month  for 
~ three years.  The scheduled date came and went, no DSL package in the 
~ mail, no installer.  So I called them, and called them, and 
~ called them. 
~  Finally the lady on the other end of the line admitted that 
~ they won't 
~ be able to provide DSL in Rockwall south of I-30 for at least another 
~ 2-3 years so they had canceled the order.  She also informed 
~ me that it 
~ is not the SWB policy to inform the customer when the order was 
~ canceled  and I might as well seek alternatives.  So much for 
~ customer 
~ service.
~ 
~ That very day I noticed that our local cable comany had sold out to 
~ Charter.  I called them, and behold, the next day I  had 
~ cable broadband 
~ service.  The first two weeks, service was very spotty, down 
~ more than 
~ up, etc., but it is improving, so there is still hope.  And 
~ when service 
~ is down, I just route everything through  the ISDN router to 
~ my office 
~ in Dallas.  We have 2m/8m DSL from Sprint and 768k/3m DSL from SWBell 
~ there.</soapbox>
~ 
~ >The majority of the USA is not served by economical high 
~ speed Internet
~ >> access (consumer satellite doesn't count).
~ _______________________________________________
~ rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
~