[vox] DSL providers?

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Henry House wrote:

> My roommate asked me:
> 
> > Do you know any promotions going on, or anyone who has gotten Comcast 
> > or Omsoft for a good deal recently?
> 
> I figured that vox is a good place to pass along this question :-). I have
> heard almost entirely good reports about Omsoft and mostly good reports
> about Calnet, but mixed to bad reports about other providers. The current
> DSL (SBC) is quite terrible --- ssh sessions hang every few minutes, making
> the DSL almost unusable for work. A dynamic IP address is okay since I do
> not indend to run any servers.
> 
> I would appreciate any suggestions about DSL providers, especially RECENT
> experiences.

Disclaimer: I moved from a place with a very long run to the CO... I used
Omsoft, which of course depends on SBC to setup the wires... so the poor
connectivity I had was almost certainly due to my long wire run and SBC's
policies regarding not giving me a better pair of wires.  My reason for
switching to Comcast was primarily being able to avoid losing broadband
for a couple of weeks while the wheels of impedimentation designed to make
doing business with third-party ISPs like Omsoft turned. (Of course, SBC
still managed to turn my voice line conversion into a three ring circus
for a week longer than I expected.)

A friend of mine moved here from San Luis Obispo a few weeks ago, where he
had had Comcast.  He had to do some calling around to get someone who
would sell him the service here, and between his quote and my two calls, I
have encountered four different quotes.

a) Free installation, six months of $45 per month, followed by a normal
rate of around $60 per month.  This rate reflects the fact that he does
not have a television... they charge more if you have no cable television.

b) I don't have a television either.  My first call, they offered me no
incentive, just a ~$50 install fee and a ~$60 per month rate.

c) On my second call, the salesman quoted ~$50 install fee, ~$34/mo for
the first three months, and then ~$60/mo normal fee (no tv).

d) ... but then he pointed out that if I went for cable tv, they could
give me ~$50 install fee, ~$36/mo for the first year, and then a normal
rate of ~$57/mo after that. So what if I don't have a tv... and they don't
have a minimum service duration, so I can go back to Omsoft if and when I
want to.

Having lived with the connection for awhile...

e) sometimes it seems to crap out... the power button on the modem doesn't
actually cycle power, but if I unplug it and re-plug it in, it seems to
come back up at full force.

f) my friend has no problems with his connection, so you might get lucky
too.

g) at first, the ip number changed several times... then it seemed to
settle down, and it hasn't changed since.  I don't know if that is because
I have the same box sitting there all the time requesting the same dhcp
lease, but it could be... if you don't keep the connection up, I don't
know how stable the ip address will be.

h) I am continuing to feed my email through my (now reduced) DCN/Omsoft
account... but I have to run outgoing mail through the Comcast smtp
server.  Seems to work, though the received headers probably look
strange.

i) Comcast is a haven for spammers... you may find some difficulty with
people not trusting you due to the neighborhood you chose to live in. :)
Comcast does have some potentially draconian terms of service which they
probably use to deal with obnoxious users, though I haven't run afoul of
them (yet?).

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