 Review by MrMoody 
UPDATED: 51 days ago
member for 7.2 years, 1421 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Clayton,Johnston,NC
 $55 per month (12 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "Faster, more reliable than Time Warner cable, works great"
 "no dialup service"
 "Just works"
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(ratings match consensus)
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When I first got Time Warner cable 7 years ago, it was 3000/384.Over the years this gradually increased to a maximum of 5000/512 about two years ago with little price increase; in fact this was during the time I had a promo package price due to adding digital TV service I hadn't used previously. Then within the last year or two it dropped back to 3000/320, corresponding to their starting a "Turbo Charge" offer. I upload large databases on a regular basis so uplink speed is very important to me, and 320k just wasn't cutting it, so a couple months ago I bought into their Turbo deal which promised "up to" 8000/512 for $10 more. When they activated it, I had a pitiful 4000/384 at $55/month, so I went shopping. I was surprised to find that Embarq (the telco previously known as Sprint) was now offering DSL in my somewhat rural location, a good 7 miles from town.
I promptly ordered a self-install online, received the Zyxel 660 modem with filters and CD a couple days later, and it was basically plug and play. It's DHCP dynamic IP but changes rarely (maybe once a month). Speeds test at around 4800/650 and ping times are low here unlike some others' experience. No need to use the CD or install the Earthlink spyware, I mean software. I've never had an outage that I noticed. I'm a happy camper except for the time I just had to spend away from home and found out I couldn't use my Embarq account through Earthlink dialup (a minor quibble). RoadRunner threw that in but I'll take the speed and price of Embarq gladly. Tech support is good but only seems available during extended business hours.
The only other thing I could wish for is even more uplink speed, 768, 1M ... I'd pay more for that.
6 month Update: Embarq rolled out the higher uplink speeds I wished for, but it doesn't work here.  Other than that everything's been great. No bottlenecks/slowdowns that I've noticed, the connection is super reliable, only one outage due to a car accident. This is much better than Time Warner who would have outages of two hours or more once a month. But speed is king; I'd whore myself back to them for a usable 1mb+ upload. But might as well wish for the moon as RoadRunner is heavily saturated here and no chance of fiber competition any time soon.
2 years in: 10mbit became available here last year and I ordered right away. They conditioned my line down to 4000 ft, and I have had zero problems. I can't even remember the last outage. It's so trouble free, I don't even think about it any more. I just wish it was a little cheaper and better upload speed ...
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Embarq
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Unfortunately it won't sync up any faster than 655k (net); apparently I need to clean up some noisy wiring or move closer to the CO ...