[conspire] Att Yahoo Dsl

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Daniel Gimpelevich (daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us):

> One more difference: AT&T/Yahoo apparently charges a $99 one-time setup
> fee which DSLExtreme does not. AT&T/Yahoo also had much more restrictive
> Terms of Use and Acceptable Usage Policies last I checked.

Just because I feel like it, I'm going to praise Raw Bandwidth
Communications and its main guy Mike Durkin.  Again.  (RBC provides my
house and thus CABAL with enhanced DSL.  It's not the cheapest DSL 
option, but I remain a very satisfied customer.  No PPPoE crap, only
vanishingly rare and short outages, and just generally competent and
professional service.)

Tidbit:  At the time we arranged the move to 1105 Altschul, Durkin very
efficiently worked with me to ensure decent quality of service
(problematic, because we're even farther physically from the telco
central office than we used to be) _and_ made a couple of suggestions on
his own initiative to lower our pricing!

Here's my writeup on the new billings, to Deirdre and Cheryl:

  From rick Wed Jun 28 16:03:12 2006
  Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 16:03:13 -0700
  To: Dire Red <deirdre at deirdre.net>, Cheryl Morris <camorris at mars.ark.com>
  Subject: Raw Bandwidth billings (just FYI, trivia)

  Raw Bandwidth bills arrive as e-mailed PDFs, these days:  Mike Durkin
  asked if we wouldn't mind, quite a few months back, and I said sure,
  since it saves them postage.  Today's just arrived:  This e-mail _isn't_
  any litany of horrors.  I just thought it was interesting, and that you
  might, likewise.

  For the first time, it's two pages, because at the time of the move I
  made a couple of changes to our contract:

  o  Agreed to a one-year contract, to at least 2006-05-07 (got us a
     $15/month discount, and eliminated activation fee for 1105 Altschul)
  o  Agreed to pay each six months of service in advance (got us a
     10% discount)

  Both of these cost reductions were _suggested by the vendor_!  How about
  that for service?

  So, I'd mostly forgotten the fine details when today's bill arrived, and
  at first was puzzled by the $311.47 bottom line -- since prior bills
  were for bimonthly service, and thus lower.

  Each month is like this:

  Residential DSL                       $44.95
  Extra IPs                              15.00
                                         -----
  Subtotal                              $59.95
  - 10% discount                        <~6.00>  (rounded)
  Federal Universal Service Fund charge   1.68  [1]
                                         -----
  Total new monthly rate               ~$55.63   (rounded)
                                         =====

  For the six months of July - December, 2006, that's ~$55.63 x 6 = ~$333.78.

  The reason the invoice bottom line is $22.30 lower, however, is that Raw
  Bandwidth also credited _that_ amount to also apply the reduced one-year
  rate to the preceding May 11 - June 30 time period (1 2/3 months).

  [1] http://www.rawbandwidth.com/support/faq/fusf.html