I recently had DSL put in by GTE. I'm located in SoCal. I wanted DSL so badly after years of semi-working ISDN that I made the mistake of getting it as soon as it was available for my area, which meant I also had to accept GTE as my ISP. Mistake.
DSL works great. It drops a packet now and then, but at 384k (which is the speed I chose...I could have paid more and gotten all the way up to 1Mb per second), my home network is like being at a wired office all the time. The DSL hookup itself is flawless. The installation man was here for about 20 minutes. We continually use the same phone line for both DSL and voice/fax calls at the same time, with never a glitch.
You do have to keep in mind that one of DSL's main drawbacks is that you have to live within 2-3 miles of a CO switch. More than that, and attenuation from wire length makes the maximum DSL speed you can use start to drop off, eventually to zero. I live close to a CO so I don't have the problem.
When you call a provider to ask about DSL, they can test your line right then and there, so you find out whether everything will work before you bear any installation costs.
The bad part for me has been GTE, the worst company for customer service I have ever dealt with, and that's saying something. They treat their customers like garbage. I won't go into all the details other than to say that trying to get a human being on the phone that can actually help you with anything other than a trivial bill adjustment is either a nightmare or a joke, depending on the mood you're in. I'm not talking about technical support...everything technical has worked fine. I'm talking about getting a mailbox added to your account or something silly like that. It's my intention to switch providers as fast as I can.
So to sum up, getting DSL has made a believer out of me on two fronts. Front one: DSL is great, but choose your provider carefully. Front two: local phone service "natural monopolies" must be ended.
Regards,
--QwikSand |
