What's The Best ISP?

[Tonya]

Originally posted by Tubby & Peanut's Mom
Here at work I have DSL through SBC and have no problems with it.....now that everything is configured and set up correctly. I had a problem at first that whenever it rained my service was intermitent. They said it was "internal" I said how can it be internal when it only happens when it rains? It turned out to be both internal and external and now that we have it figured out everything works fine.

I have Comcast at home and love it! It is definitely faster than the DSL I have at work - so much so that I can notice the difference here on PT. I'm not thrilled with Comcast as a company. They bought out AT & T who I thought was one of the most arrogant companies around, and since Comcast inherited the workers, they inherited the arrogance. For the most part, the guys who come out to do the work are very friendly and knowledgeable - it's the phone customer service that you have to have patience with. However, all that said, it's been about two years that we've had the cable service and I only had a problem once. We don't have cable TV, only cable internet so there is a filter they put in the "box" that makes sure we don't get the TV service. Evidently that thing geeked out and was also blocking our internet service, so they came out and replaced it. I took 4 days for them to come out which was a ridiculously long time, and they don't provide any dial-up numbers for access if the cable is out (they say they're working on that).

So, other than that one minor problem I am extremely happy with the cable internet service and would recommend it to anyone. Oh, and I'm not happy with the price - $57.99/month - either, but whaddya gonna do?

Oh, and one last thing. We got Comcast at home because we can't get DSL there. If we were able to get DSL we would probably have that because in my experience SBC is so much easier to deal with than Comcast (it's the arrogance thing).

Your work DSL is different then residential DSL. They're put on priority lines and monitored. We (SBC) use much better equipment for the business lines. The work I do to set up a residential DSL line vs a business DSL line is night and day.

With res. DSL, I test the lines to make sure the standards are decent. The lines can have moderate shorts, grounds, and even cross talk (where someone else's line bleeds on to yours) and still meet res. DSL standards. I put a card at the central office and an installer or customer installs a card at the premise in the computer. The customer gets a few filters for their jacks.

With bus. DSL, I test the lines to make sure the standards are excellent. I put a higher powered better quality card at the central office and personally install it at the premise. Depending on how far you are from the central office, I place several repeaters on the cable (approx every 1.5 miles). The repeaters have high powered cards in them that boost the signal back up.

I also have to go through all the records and remove all the "bridgetap". Bridgetap is basically extra wire. Think of your phone line as a street. Your signal is better if it goes down just one street straight to your house. If there are a bunch of dead end roads off of that street, the signal weekends because it's bleeding off to all those side streets. In business DSL, the standards are no bridgetap. In residential DSL, you just can't have bridgetap within the last few hundred feet of the premise.

Hope I made a little sense. hehe.