Holy cow, Stephen. How did you survive? Were you reduced to having to guard the fire from encroaching neighbors?

(I'm not being sarcastic. I had a cable-modem outage a few months ago, and I felt like it was the end of the world.)

I've been using Qwest DSL in Phoenix for a year, and have only had one outage lasting ~18 hrs. (a server meltdown and replacement). Plus, I get 1.2Mb/s download speed.

Speakeasy.net -- if they have service in your area I'd highly recommend them (you can check online). Good customer service, fast ... but a bit more expensive.

Sorry, to double-post, but by good service I mean:

1) easy to get a human on the phone
2) responsive -- had a problem w/ my dsl line, resolved it, and credited a month of service when I asked
3) I missed a deadline for the installation rebate b/c I wanted #2 resolved first, they credited my account the value of the rebate.
3) they email me when they expect to have downtime in my area (the only time qwest will email you you'll be looking for an unsubscribe link).

Check out this speakeasy deal for slashdot readers.

speakeasy

Just think, if you get speakeasy through slashdot your street geek cred will go way up.

Pretty good luck with Qwest DSL in Phoenix here, too.

Depending on what neighborhood you're in, you might want to check out Falconbroadband.net. It's over-the-air high-speed service. I live on the east side of town in Springs Ranch and get a great signal. They do a free site survey, free installation, no equipment fee, and no annual service contract.

Knock on wood.

We've had wireless DSL service from Bellsouth for almost two years and haven't had one minute of interrupted service.

Good luck in finding this same kind of excellence and soon. Life's too short not to be lived on the net.

TO: Stephen Green
RE: Qwest???!?!?

DON'T DO IT!!!!!!

I was with Qwest. Years ago. I'd get outages of their DSL too. And I spent hours on hold waiting to talk to a tech support rep.

I dropped Qwest and went with PCI Systems. I've been VERY happy ever since.

The funny thing is that they sub-let through Qwest. But, because I'm part of a large number of people represented by PCI Systems, I suspect that Qwest pays closer attention to them than they would to me, as an individual.

Strength in numbers, compadre.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

I live in Fort Collins and use Qwest's DSL. It was out all last night. I didn't check this morning before leaving for work but it wouldn't surprise me if it was still out. DON'T do it, Stephen!

We've had wireless DSL service from Bellsouth for almost 2 years...

Ditto us. Once in a blue moon a momentary slow down, but overall they're great and dependable. (Even 'in the face of a hurricane west wind'. Apologies to Gordon Lightfoot.)

If you're on the north or west side, try www.springslink.com, a wireless ISP by a couple of the old omnipoint guys.

I've had DSL at 2 homes in CO through Qwest for over 5 years and can only remember one outage lasting more than a few minutes. I think Qwest service sucks in general but their DSL works great!

Its a shame you are in Adelphia's franchise. I've been with Comcast ( originally ATT Cable ) cable broadband for three years now and have had a grand total of one outage lasting about an hour for the whole time.

The quality of Qwest's DSL varies a lot by region, if you want personal experiences stick to your neighbors'.

I had a similar experience with Charter and after multiple internet outages (one that lasted almost a week) I obtained Bellsouth DSL and haven't had anything more than a couple minutes here or there with connectivity problems.

Indeed, consulting my archives, it was over a year ago and no problems of note to date: http://www.poliblogger.com/index.php?p=2920

Read Robin's comment and know that better times are coming. Comcast and Time Warner are in the process of buying and splitting up Adelphia, and your neighborhood will go to Comcast.

All the bad things you've heard about Comcast are not entirely true, and I think their service is getting better every day.

And the guy bragging about 1.2 mb/s on DSL? Cocmast is going to 4 mb/s down and 512k up in all markets this year.

Has anyone had problems with AT&T DSL? I'm in Orange County, Calif.

I had a cable modem and it sucked! I would try to get some free services for the inconvenience.

You guys need to get a life and get out some. Your broadband gets out of whack and you don't know what to do. You know what I use for internet? Two soup cans and a string.

I'm off to my manly real life...right after using my hair-in-a-can and eating some chicken from my rotisserie oven.

CSM Ron Popeil (ret.)

TO: CSM Ron Popeil (ret.)
RE: Getting a Life

"You guys need to get a life and get out some. Your broadband gets out of whack and you don't know what to do." -- CSM First-Last Papa

Oh...I think they know what to do. They're just pitching a b----.

RE: Two Cans and a Piece of String

"You guys need to get a life and get out some. Your broadband gets out of whack and you don't know what to do." -- CSM First-Last Papa.

Sounds to me like you could patent that and make AT&T/Qwest/BellSouth and all the others look like doggie doo.

RE: Food for 'Thought'

"...right after using my hair-in-a-can and eating some chicken from my rotisserie oven." -- CSM First-Last Papa

Bon appetite, sergeant-major....

"I'm off to my manly real life..." -- CSM First-Last Papa

Have fun, too.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[If you had a life in the first place, you'll never have a mid-life crisis.]

P.S. God is alive....and airborne-ranger qualified.

Try living in New York. Knicks and Mets fans can't watch their teams play on TimeWarner because Cablevision refuses to accept arbitration.

Better yet, what about Washington DC? The Nationals, the new capital Baseball team, may not even be on local television because Peter Angelos (the Orioles) has been stone walling Major League Baseball from making a TV deal for the Nats.

I HATE CABLE!

Matt, indeed I'm already seeing close to 4mbps on my Comcast.

Chuck —" God is alive... and airbone-ranger qualified."

You mean tired, muddy and hungry?

TO: richard
RE: mcenroe

"You mean tired, muddy and hungry?" -- richard mcenroe

Well...the last time I saw Him (depicted), in Mel Gibson's movie, He looked like He'd been on a mission from hell....except for the last 15 seconds. Then He looked fit as a fiddle, after a three day 'rest'; looked up, stood up, and moved out. New day. New mission.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

Well, since we haven't heard from him since Monday, I'm betting Adelphia is down yet again.......

I had Qwest DSL for five years in Seattle without a single outtage or hiccup.

Roadrunner on Brighthouse cable is doing nicely.

We've had a couple of outages here lately, but in each case, there was a crew on site in under an hour, with the longest time to fix under two hours.

3,638 Kbps on the speed test just now... in the middle of the day (busy time).

DSL isn't any panacea, that's for sure. We have Verison DSL at the office, and it's abysmally slow and prone to outages. We don't bother to try to contact Verizon for help, because the telephone wait time for their tech support is longer than the hour or two it usually takes for the service to come back up on its own after a crash.

Sprint DSL at home is faster than the Verizon service, but it cuts in and out like a lousy cell phone conversation. "Help from Sprint" is in the Oxford Guide as a prime example of an oxymoron.

We have Comcast cable modem at another location, and it hasn't failed to perform since we installed it, about a year ago. But again, if I have questions, it's a waste of time to call. During the initial setup, after a half-hour queue wait, I was connected to a very nice but absolutely ignorant woman reading from a script: "Sir, first let's check to see if it's plugged in." Good grief.

TO: RedBeard
RE: Well...

"...[an] absolutely ignorant woman reading from a script: "Sir, first let's check to see if it's plugged in."" -- RedBeard

...not everybody is as bright as we here, compadre.

It's rather 'funny', in certain respects. I mean...

...when my wife, standing beside me in the ER (last April when this flap about my heart developed), is telling the attending nurse how to affix the EKG device to my torso...

...you develop a keen sense of 'irony'.

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[Into 'extended play' and relishing EVERY HEART-POUNDING MINUTE of it....]

So you've been off the air for two days now. Let that be a lesson to you. Don't fuck with indicted cable. Or if you do, be sure to blogroll Vote for Judges. 'Cause you're gonna need a little "official" help.

Chuck, I've got another "not as bright" deal for ya.

HP, in its infinite wisdom, has farmed out tech support to Bombay. I needed some info recently, and spoke to a gentleman who was unfriendly, arrogant, and virtually unintelligible, requiring me to request, over and over again, that he repeat what he was trying to say. The capper was that he (an HP printer techie, mind you) did not have the slightest idea what PCL meant. When I asked to speak to someone else, he refused to connect me.

Amazing stuff. Apparently the whole concept of customer service has been lost.

"Amazing stuff. Apparently the whole concept of customer service has been lost."

Yes! ...and the reason, especially in the tech. world is a lack of sufficient competition. Every time I hear of another large merger, inwardly I cringe...

TO: RedBeard
RE: HP

"HP, in its infinite wisdom, has farmed out tech support to Bombay." -- RedBeard

I'd already given up on HP in February, when I called their tech support people about a problem with a scanner of theirs.

As I preceived their reply to my request for help, I could go f--- myself.

I had occassion to buy a portable printer to support my efforts at managing a late-friends estate. I needed something to print labels and packing lists.

I had a choice between an HP and a Canon. I've used HP for the last decade. Guess which product I dropped on....

...first two guesses don't count.

Regards,

Chuck(le)

P.S. Did I ever tell you about the incident where a friend of mine reported that he had to use an interpreter in an hospital ER room in order to communicate with a doctor about his child? That was here in the US.

And people looked at me as if I had come from another planet at a 'diversity' training session where I exclaimed, "I cannot lead men into combat if they don't speak the same language as I do....and expect to win....let alone live."

[Note: Based on a personal experience where we had a young lieutenat assigned to my battalion of infantry, who did not speak english. It was tragic....]