[conspire] (forw) Legacy DSL ending at Raw Bandwidth on 12/19/19 - please read carefully!

[Texx]

I have a different take on Sonic (A good one, shockingly enough)

ATT was pressuring us to convert to their bundled (bungled?) "Uverse".
They phoned several times a week with one lame ass tactic aftrer another.

"They dont make DSL anymore"
I reminded them that Uverse *** IS *** DSL  (OK actually Uverse is DSL3 and
ATT was discontinuing DSL2)

"Connect to our fibre network"
I told them we didnt have fibre in the area
"Oh, the fibre is inside the modem"

I pointed out that we wanted analog phone service which Uverse so that the
phones would work during power cuts.
They offered to sell us a UPS.
But the repeater cans between us and the CO only have 4hr battery in them.
They said power never goes out for more than 4 hrs.
We actually have a cut over 24 hrs every 2 or 3 years or so,

(I was not predicting PGEs games this year when we were out 30 hrs)

We didnt need a lot of bandwidth, so I had gone with an unadvertised tarrif
and set us up for 700k.
We never broke 130k.
When they promised us high bandwidth, I reminded them that they couldnt
even give us what we contracted for,
how would I trust them for over a meg?
I also reminded them that they were not maintaining their lines, so i didnt
think they could deliver.
They told me that Uverse was wireless.

Each time I caught them in a lie, they would hang up on me.

After 2 years of this, they simply killed our internet, but not the billing
of course.

Friends had been telling us to move to Sonic for a couple years, but we
really wanted to stay with ATT anyway.
Finally I talked to Sonic.  (Thanks Michael!)

I got technical people who werent bullshitting me at every turn.
They gave me a written guarantee that we were analog all the way to the CO,
with no voice repeaters in the path.
The gave me written promise that the phone would work during any extended
power cut and as long as I could power the modem,
our internet would continue.

I found out after we made the change, that Dad had several calling plans,
and after the first year, they had raised out internet charge to premium
price, despite the lack of bandwidth.
Our phone bill was well over 100/mo

What we got was, 6.5meg, flat rate analog calling in the US, and all for
50/mo.
They gave us a chance to cancel on the spot if they couldnt get a us a
decent line pair.

Wait times to reach a tech on the phone are a tad long, I admit, but after
installation, I never needed help.
All in all, I got 100% professional experience.

Then, PGE cut the power in late Oct.
Without working UPS at our end, I dont know what happened to net access.
The voice worked perfectly.

When the power returned, the modem didnt come back to life.
I spent an hr on the phone for support.
The greeting wanrned us that most of the support dept was in evacuation
centres due to the fire and unable to make it in to work.
Several times I was given the option to have them call me back when it was
my turn in the queue.
Several more times I was given the option of remaining on hold in silence.

I remained on the line, music and all and finally got "Brian", a very
pleasant kid who was evacuated from home,
and one of a handful of tech support people camiong under their desks,
enjoying the overtime that would be financing a trip to Hawaii later this
winter.

This was not a "Is it plugged in?" type guy.

Shipping a new modem would be 4 days, perhaps less.
I asked him to check and he was agreeable to exchange the modem in the
parking lot if I drove to Santa Rosa.

When I got there, all the cracks around all the doors were sealed with
packing tape except one door.
Obviously the lobby doors were sealed with tape.
They had even sealed the roll up loading door.
We did the modem exchange, there was no charge for the exchange.
I plugged the modem in and pointed my web brouwser at a URL and suddenly
everything ewwas working.

My experience was freaking fantastic.

When we made the change, It was a 2 day process.
Because of thweir relationship (shotgun wedding) with ATT, they had to cut
us over to a Sonic phone number,
so we had outgoing voice with almost no downtime, but calls to our ATT
number rang unanswered for a day while they
ported out original number over to us on the second day.
We have had that number since Labor Day of 1963.

During the cut over, I asked if I could use one of several DSL boxes I
already had.
They said it was possible, but incredibly messy and would require multiple
tech support calls to make it work.
They were willing, but they wanted us up and running ASAP and reusing one
of the ATT DSL boxes would take time.

The DSL box that came with the service was SOOOOO superior to anything I
had in my junque box, that I was glad to just go with the PACE.

In Sonics defense, they have a home business and a business business.

While I note that Sonic is running their own fibre and a certain abount of
copper,
likely not trusting ATT to maintain plant.
I am not privvy to whats involved int he ATT/Sonic relationship, but I
suspect that some of the restrictions could be related to said relationship.

It appears that Sonic has its own DSLAMs in our local CO, which is the only
reason I can get the service I got.

Normal home net connectivityis pretty cheap, because most homes dont have
static addresses, nor mail & web servers.
Home users need to surf the web, download porn, read mail, and spend
obscene ampounts of time on "Face Crack"

Obviously, business have all sorts of stuff running and lawyers to scream
when something breaks.

Home service does not usually require mail & web servers running or static
addresses.
We tecties who do need these things are rare and straddling the two classes
of service.

In the defense of Sonic, people needing static addresses, running web &
mail servers, really should just go for business class of service.

I do not believe the restrictions on home service are anything evil.
I believe they have defined a logical home service and are offering it.
Anything else, really does seem to be business, even if you are not turning
a profit on it.

I note that when it got out that ATT customer info was being sold,
Sonic came out and stated that their customer info was "not for sale" and
would remain so.

You may not be able to get everything you wanted out of the home plan and I
get that.
Please dont call them evil because you cant get everything you want.
We (Conspire) are better than the "Deadbeat in Chief"




On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 12:04 PM Howard Susman <hsusman at scsurplus.com>
wrote:

> On 11/15/19 9:15 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
>
> Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):
>
>
> You might also check www.wavebroadband.com to see if they can reach
> you with their cable modem service.  I think static IPs would be
> available on their business service if service is generally
> available. It's same technology as Comcast but their own network if
> they can reach you.
>
> Wave Broadband called to say that my street address in West Menlo _is_
> within their service area for fibre but not for copper cable, so I
> expressed interest and they're doing a site survey over the next couple
> of days.  So, I gather that if I were to sign up, they'd do a short run
> of fibre optic from somewhere on Altschul Drive to my house.
>
> I gather that with a lot of these services, a lot depends on what
> cabling they have near a target address.
>
> _______________________________________________
> conspire mailing listconspire at linuxmafia.comhttp://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire
>
> I called Wave Broadband. They cannot service my address.
>
> I received this from Mike Durkin:
>
> Howard,
>
>
> On 11/12/19 12:19 AM, Mike Durkin wrote:
>
> Howard,
>
> You'll be able to keep the hosting as you suggested on your voicemail,
> it's the basic Internet access that needs to change. I will see
> what I can find for options for your area and email you in a couple
> days.  If you have something you're considering, let me know and
> I'll look at it and advise.
>
> thanks, Mike
>
>
> Thank you for your help.  I hope you find something. I did call AT&T and
> the best they could offer me was speed up to 3Mbs. The price quoted for
> that was $60 a month. I would really want a higher data rate than that.
> I will see what  you find and keep looking myself.  Thank you very much
> for your assistance.
>
> Note your service from us is 1.5Mbps/384Kbps, so 3Mbps would be faster,
> but if I put your address in on AT&T's website it says 1.5Mbps for
> $50/mo plus $10/mo equipment and applicable taxes (there shouldn't
> be any taxes on pure Internet, but could be monthly sales tax
> on the equipment rental (which is dumb because that could be avoided
> if AT&T just pays sales tax on the device at time they purchase it)).
> If they can get you 3Mbps for the same price then it'd be a bit faster.
>
> I checked http://business.comcast.com for your address and they're showing
> service as being available, and faster speeds (generally if cable
> modem service is available, all the speeds available in the area
> will be available at all addresses).  They also show some equipment
> rental fees in addition to the headline monthly price, and they have
> some deals with a bundled phone line.  At somewhat higher speeds
> they also have a 4G LTE backup option which sounds interesting...
> basically I think if your cable modem link goes down, the router
> automatically maintains your connection over cellular without
> any changes to your computer.  You might want to talk to them on the
> phone and see if they can put together a package for you with a lower
> end connection, like the 25Mbps they show at the low end, but with
> the 4G LTE backup.  And even better, if they can sell you just the
> cable modem connection but give you an enforcable promise to let
> you add the LTE backup later at some known cost if you decide
> it's needed, so that you can evaluate the cable modem reliability
> and not incur the cost if it's sufficient.
>
> I'd also suggest double checking with a live person at Comcast
> to ensure you can actually get it to your building and how long
> it'll take to install.  They don't have ubiquitious service to
> business locations, so I wouldn't want to rely on the website
> being right, and they may also have listed your address as
> available but some construction with a long leadtime might be
> needed.	Maybe see if any of the other businesses in your building
> (or adjacent buildings that are physically connected) have
> Comcast since that'd be a very good sign for you being able to get
> it, and you can also check with them on what their experience
> is with reliability.
>
> I'd be careful about changes to your voice service, whether moving
> it to Comcast or moving it to some other product with AT&T.  You'd
> need to make sure that it has whatever features you need.  I think
> you just had 4 line telephones or something, so if you have 4
> lines in a hunt group but never receive more than 3 incoming calls
> at once, you could for example move the 4th line to Comcast outside
> of the hunt group and be mindful to place outgoing calls on that
> line (maybe with blocked caller ID so people don't call you back on
> it).  But in any case, it can get dicey to manage special cases like
> that so maybe you want to get just Internet and leave phone service
> alone.  On the other hand, if you're paying regular AT&T landline
> rates, you're probably paying a lot these days, and maybe switching
> it to something more modern could save you money. Over the top voip
> separate from whoever you get the Internet connection from could also
> work, as long as the Internet connection is reliable (and some
> voip providers may be able to setup failover where they forward
> calls to a cellphone if the voip link is down, and cheap cell service
> for voice if you don't care much about cellular data can be gotten
> for < $20/mo these days.
>
> I don't know of other wireline services you might be able to get
> at commodity rates (ie. decent speed for under $200/mo) but you
> might be able to find a fixed wireless provider that could do it.www.wiline.com and www.ethericnetworks.com are two in the area
> I'm aware of, but I'm not certain about their coverage areas or
> typical pricing.
>
> thanks, Mike
>
>
>
> I called Comcast and they offered me this;
>
> Recommended Solution
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Monthly Charge: *$81.85/month
> *COMCAST BUSINESS * See how we can give your business more.
> SOLUTION(S):
> *Business Internet *
> Business Internet Starter, Business Wi-Fi Standard, Equipment Fee
> *Business Voice *
> 1 Mobility Voice Line
>
>    - Access to fast, reliable network with speed up to 1G
>    - 24/7 dedicated business customer support
>    - Access to over 17M XFINITY hotspots
>
> *Term Agreement: * 36 Months
> *Installation Charge: * $29.95
> Continue
> <https://business.comcast.com/gateway/esign?ID=ff82b684-1521-4326-8813-7c1b7661a0ee&timestamp=1573842370502&securityHash=eyUx7KMb5brRE/5KBEwkaxIx5Jw=&accessType=edit>
> _______________________________________________
> conspire mailing list
> conspire at linuxmafia.com
> http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire
>


-- 

R "Texx" Woodworth
Sysadmin, E-Postmaster, IT Molewhacker
"Face down, 9 edge 1st, roadkill on the information superdata highway..."
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