Alternatives to AT&T DSL service [telecom]

Recently my AT&T DSL service has started to deteriorate in quality. Speed drops to unusable levels randomly, when I complain they try to sell me Uverse. It's 5-static, 1.5MBps/384kBps, my own nameservers, AT&T domain registration.

A local ISP claims to offer an alternative service provided I have AT&T copper to my premises, which of course I do. They claim to use AT&T wire but "their equipment". It looks like a lower-cost replacment...but:

How does this arrangement work, and is it apt to be an improvement?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

Reply to
Bob Prohaska
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That depends entirely on the ISP. They are entitled to lease the copper pair that goes to you house, under the "interconnect" rules, and that fact is *EXACTLY* why AT&T and other ILECs are trying to convert everyone over to fiber or cellular, since that don't have to share those "facilities" with their competition.

However, be careful of jumping out of the frying pan you know into the fire you don't: I had Speakeasy DSL for years, using the same pair that served my home phone, until one day Speakeasy abandoned my town with no notice. They may be AT&T's competitors, but don't ever forget that "local" or "alternative" doesn't mean "non-profit".

The one advantage of having a non-facilities-based CLEC or ISP is that they're not going to lick AT&T's boots: they'll do what works best and gives them better profits, and that fact /usually/ translates into better service for you. The enemy of your enemy, however, is not necessarily your friend.

FWIW. YMMV.

Reply to
Bill Horne

I used to do that with my Baby Bell (NW Bell/USWest/Qwest/now CenturyLink). It was only available for the original DSL, for which that looks like about the max speed. It worked well, because for problems you contacted your ISP, and they had the contacts to skip all the script monkeys and directly talk to somebody at the telco who was competent. (In my experience, the telco's technical staff were usually very competent, but the telco did their best to prevent you from talking to them.)

But they would not resell connectivity for VDSL2 (higher speeds) to ISPs, you had to use them as the ISP.

From a consumer viewpoint, it was a great improvement (my local ISP was very competent, if you called them, chances were that whoever answered the phone could fix your problem on the spot).

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Reply to
Dave Garland

The good news is that instead of your spending forever on hold with idiots at AT&T, you call the local ISP and they fight with AT&T to get a good pair. They will have access to talk to actual technicians rather than have to escalate through four tiers to get to someone who can authorize a truck roll, like you have to do.

If the local ISP has good customer service (and hopefully they do, or they wouldn't have lasted through the chaos of the 2000s), then your general experiences are apt to be much better.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

As far as I can tell, The U-verse AT&T is trying so valiantly to sell to me remains "copper to the premises". Does it somehow become exempt from "interconnect" rules if I change to U-verse?

In my case the provider is called omsoft.com and seems to be as reputable as one can reasonably expect to find. They might be bought out or fold, but I don't think they're big enough to move away.

Who is responsible for maintenance of my copper link? Historically that's been the weak point, at least for voice: Rain caused line noise and in some cases total loss of dialtone. The DSL service worked straight through the voice outage. There's no clear indication what's been causing the recent DSL problems, but it wouldn't be surprising if it's the copper.

Understood. Thanks for a speedy and informative reply!

bob prohaska

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Reply to
bob prohaska

snips

To Dave and the OP: any WISPs (wireless ISPs) in your areas? A few years back I moved to semi-rural Utah and that's all they had (not even any DSL this far out). I was not keen on the idea of wireless, but needed a connection -- particularly as I was also going VOIP for the phones. I was so disgusted with Centurylink in my old location that I never wanted to deal with them again, ever, and they're the copper provider here.

After some growing pains during the first year I can say now that I love the system. My connection to the tower that's 3 miles away is capable of 60 MBpS (though I'm only paying for 10 @ $35/month and with VOIP there is no phone bill). The LAN connection I have to my brother's house using similar hardware (Ubiquity) can do 300 MBpS. He's 1000 feet away.

At least in this area several WISPs strongly compete (that helps keep things honest). Seems like a win, and you're not beholded to ATT, Verizon, et al. The half-dozen or so WISPs here are all regional independents.

Frank

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Reply to
Frank Stearns

A friend in Santa Rosa, CA, took up such an arrangement with Sonic.net some years ago, and was overjoyed ... for a good while. Eventually the arrangement soured (no. I know not why, nor how) and a faster ISP got used.

More than that I do not know, sorry. Cheers, and good luck, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

I suspect that wireless would require a rather formidable antenna tower to obtain useful line of sight range. The neighborhood is populated by trees fifty and more feet high. From the rooftop only sky is visible, and not much of that.

There are wireless ISPs around, but far as I can tell they service folks outside wireline range and tend to charge more than wireline rates. I'm not looking for particularly high speed; 1.5MB/sec is fast enough, but I'd like static addresses to simplify running some hobby servers. I'd also like to keep my telco-powered landline, to have connectivity when the power goes down.

This afternoon I spent some time on the phone with AT&T while the line was slow. The CSR clearly didn't know much, but he did agree to open a service ticket for a tech visit Saturday afternoon.

The usual ping time (DSL modem to AT&T peer) is normally ~50 ms. A few times per hour a single ping will take 1 sec or so, and once or twice a day ping times will exceed 2 sec for intervals of several minutes. During the tech support call ping times were around 3 sec for a span of about one hour before returning to normal for the rest of the evening.

Does this behavior ring a bell with anybody? The copper has been a known troublemaker in the past, with similar intermittency. However, that problem only affected voice, not DSL. It's been suggested the modem is "too old", but I can't reconcile that notion with self-test results (all good) and the spontaneous correction observed. But, the modem _is_ eleven years old. It's a Cayman 3546, firmware 6.4.0 (build R2). If anybody knows where to find a firmmware upgrade that might be worth trying.

Thanks for reading and all your ideas,

bob prohaska

Reply to
Bob Prohaska

Yes. The telephone service over U-verse is not tariffed and does not have to meet the state PUC specifications in any way. They are not required to do anything they don't want to with it.

It will remain AT&T. However, when something goes wrong, you will have a normal human being at the ISP whom you can talk with, and THEY can fight with AT&T. So you will no longer have to deal directly with AT&T's "customer service" team.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Ok, that explains why they're so hot to sell me U-verse. It seems clear that it's in my best interest to refuse.

The AT&T "tech" who visited did a reasonable job of showing me that the premises-to-CO copper isn't the problem. He claimed the problem is ~20 miles away, in Sacramento, in AT&T's "redback" routers. Interestingly, the tech claimed he didn't know anybody who could reliably solve the problem without changing my IP numbers. As a stopgap he arranged to have "VCC" changed and that seems to have helped some, but at least once an 80 _second_ ping time occurred. Usually ping time to the peer is now around 10 ms, with random packets taking tens to hundreds of times longer. Multi-minute slowdowns seem to have gone away.

Does this story make sense, or am I now a mushroom?

Thanks for reading!

bob prohasa

Reply to
bob prohaska

That Depends. (tm)

You CAN keep POTS with U-Verse atop it; I set this up for friends. They got snookered into VOIP over U-Verse weeks later, but reclaimed POTS when I explained what had happened. The U-verse installers trashed the wiring around the demark and that was difficult to get straightened out again. (They didn't; the homeowner did with my remote help.)

FIOS also allows you to keep pseudo-POTS, i.e. regulated service but carried over the glass. But their salesdroids will push had for you to get ""Digital Voice" I think it is called this week.

Reply to
David Lesher

Make sense? AT&T having different groups that don't talk to one another and blame one another for problems?

I wouldn't call that "making sense" but it's certainly not unusual.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

What are the keywords to look for in reading terms of service documents to make sure the service offered is in fact regulated? I'm in no hurry to change what I have, but in case I get cornered it would be good to know the "chapter and verse" that best protects my interests.

With my thanks!

bob prohaska

Reply to
Bob Prohaska

I am no expert on utility regulation, but in my opinion "regulation" doesn't mean as much as it used to. That is, many public utility companies do as they damn please, and the state and federal regulators do little or nothing. For example, this newsgroup has numerous articles of Verizon abandoning whole neighborhoods or even whole towns, and getting away with it despite public officials screaming about it*. This isn't just telephone companies, but cable, electric, gas, and water companies as well. The news media is full of articles on that as well.

In addition, the carriers have been aggressive about getting once regulated services deregulated. Some examples:

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So, getting a "regulated" service may not offer you very much protection.

  • There are personal stories as well. For instance, an elderly neighbor has Verizon landline service. His phone died and was out for ten days. He had to call them repeatedly to come out to fix it-- at first they insisted it was an inside wiring problem, then they insisted the problem was fixed. They finally told him someone was coming out, and he waited all day for a no-show. Finally it got fixed. In the meantime, he to disturb his neighbors to use their phone to call in for help, and calling them was not an effort for the weary. Regulations do not allow for this sort of interruption in service, especially to an elderly person, but that's how it was.
Reply to
HAncock4

When you order a circuit from the telco you can ask what line on the tariff that circuit is covered under. Likely unless you are a big customer they will not bother to provide that information.

Alternately you can download the state tariff yourself and look through it, but it's pretty heavy going. I suppose you could ask someone at the PUC for information though.

If it's not in the book, it's a non-tariffed service.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Understood.

I'm just looking for the language used to describe the kind of service that's subject to PUC or FCC (or whatever the relevant agency is called) oversight.

At this point my phone service is over a copper pair, is CO powered and supports pulse dialing. Is that what I should look for?

It seems likely that fiber-based, VOIP or wireless services are much less apt to fall under any sort of oversight. Am I mistaken?

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska

Reply to
Bob Prohaska

It is a "tariffed" service. That it, it is enumerated in the state utility tariff.

That's POTS service.

They are, but that's the fault of the PUC and not anything particularly inherent in the service types.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Ok, looks like "tariff" is a good keyword to look for. I checked

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and thought I had something, but couldn't find any links that led to useful places.... According to the search feature on

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the word "tariff" does not appear.....

In light of what's at stake in the present election I'm hesitant to distract them.

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

Reply to
Bob Prohaska

Many states have the tariffs online, California goes out of their way not to have them available online.

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Some telcos in California do have them available, but you may need to get a paper copy.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Y'all do realize that DSL is not tariffed. The raw DSL (not the Internet service, just the last mile transport) was, prior to 2006, tariffed at the federal level (never state level). The FCC allowed the Bells to detariff it as of 2006, no longer making it available to other ISPs, which is precisely why "net neutrality" is a thing. Internet service itself was never tariffed. Now, the DSL wire itself is treated as if it were Internet service, even though it isn't.

Reply to
Fred Goldstein

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