 Review by TheHelpful1 
UPDATED: 245 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 1045 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Upper Marlboro,Prince Georges,MD
 $39 per month
 about 60 days
 Verizon
 "Great speeds, great compatibility with XP....just great"
 "Load coils on a 1980's phone line caused a delayed"
 "Well worth the wait, especially for me"
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Install Co-ordination:
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Tech Support:
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(ratings above consensus)
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Granted I have only had this dsl for one day, but what a day. And what a journey to GET dsl. From anyone!
Since April of 99 i have been trying to get DSL, not from Elink mind you. The first two companies went under and i decided to just wait. Well it seems the third time is a charm. I signed up with Elink through their online form, Had a representative confirm everything on November 21 with a set activation date for Dec 19. On Dec 10th i got the Self install kit, Speedstream 5260(the *good* one) type kit. Dec 19th came and went and no steady green light on the modem, not even an ATM light.
After some calls back and forth between the Tech support staff, i came in contact with a very helpful technician named William, he gave me his extension number and told me what hours he worked, hours that corresponded with me perfectly. 6pm to 2am  Anyhow, after telling William from Elink what my problem was, he set up a 3 way call....well 4 including me, between Elink, Verizon, and Genuity. All things said and done, a Verizon tech was scheduled to come out to my house the next Business day, that being monday. Monday came, and in walks a very thorough Systems Technician Jeffrey Davis. Took a look at my NID box, checked things out with his portable DSL modem (guessing thats what it was) and found i had no sync at the NID, meaning no sync from the street. So he goes out to the street and climbes the pole (literally, no bucket truck yet) and finds a problem with the wiring there. Since monday was quite a dreary day with the cold wind and
borderline freezing rain, he told me he would come back tuesday with a bucket truck so he could see whats going on at the pole. Tuesday came and Mr. Davis returned with a bucket truck and found my old phone line had load coils on it, and he had to switch the line to a new pair to get the DSL signal through, instead of just a dial tone. So he switched A to B at the pole and same at the central office and my lights went green! His portable modem showed potential speeds up to 5mpbs down and 600 up (that alone made my eyes pop out), but realistically I get around 700/100 from a contracted 784/128. Hey, I'm happy. Quite happy.
After years of great dialup service from Elink....well then mindspring. I hope to be a long time DSL customer as well. And if either William from Elink or Jeffrey Davis read this post, again, i can not thank the two of you more.I still have Davis' card, but i lost Williams extension when my old email program went haywire.
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Update: Not too long ago the Elink 3.0 service rolled into my area but I was not able to get it then - Reason? Verizon was NOT allowing a competitor to deliver that speed with them as the CLEC. Remedy? Dropping my DSL service back to dialup to kick verizon out of the loop so Covad could get in. Result? About 2 months of craziness (Delays, lightning storms frying this and that on their end, etc) and now I'm up and flying at 3000mbps down and 384up.
This was so well worth the wait. On top of having web pictures move so fast its like a slide show, I upgraded during a promo which dropped my monthly price from $49 down to $35. SWEET!
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Update: After having gone through the de/reprovisioning dance to break free of Verizon's slower speed in favor of Covad as my CLEC, I now find myself back on Verizon's backbone thanks to a middle-of-the-night switch. Odd how this took less than a few hours to do but when I tried to go the other way it took near 2 months. Anyhow this time it is better, current speeds are now 3366/736 which is oddly enough stable at my loop distance. No re-sync issues and a stable connection even during thunderstorms.
One sour note is that all of the US tech support has been outsourced, so if anything does go wrong my only support will be my own intuition, the earthlink support forum or an call to India.
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