 Review by Bobcat 
UPDATED: 113 days ago
member for 7.6 years, 4272 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Bedminster,Somerset,NJ
 $32 per month
 about 5 days
 Verizon
 "Service is working perfectly"
 "Neutered newsgroups; Initially provisioned at the wrong speed"
 "Decent speeds for an excellent price"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
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Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Update June 16, 2008: The service is still working perfectly; It's never down. However, Verizon increased my rate by $2/month and eliminated most newsgroups from their news server. I have adjusted the ratings accordingly.
Update April 28, 2007: Verizon DSL is working perfectly. I recently heard that Verizon had increased the distance limits for the speed tiers. I'm at 11,765 feet and had 1.5M/384k bps service. I called Verizon and asked if I could be upgraded to 3.0M/768k bps. They said I qualified, and I was upgraded within 24 hours. Speed tests show 2725/725 kbps. Price is still $29.95 per month. Regarding the Verizon DSL service overall, no outages; zero, zilch, none. The newsgroup server has been fantastic. DNS working fine. I'm as happy as a clam.
Update Sept 19, 2006: Just updating the lower cost, as the rate has decreased to $29.95. (I'm saving $180 per year compared to the overpriced Optimum Online.) Verizon DSL service has been flawless. Zero outages. Newsgroup server has been great. DNS is working fine. Not much else to say. How can you argue with perfection?
Update Sept 19, 2005: I've had Verizon Online for over 14 months, and the service has been virtually flawless. There were some intermittent problems for a 4 hour period one Sunday morning a long time ago, but other than that one occurrence, my connection has been up 100% of the time with rock-solid 1520/378 kbps speeds. The only real problem has involved the DNS servers, and that was easily solved by switching to other DNS servers. VOL's news servers are fantastic and the email service has worked as well or better than any other ISP I've had. I'm very happy that I switched from overpriced OOL to Verizon Online DSL. The service is better overall and I'm saving $138 per year.
Original review follows:
I was an Optimum Online customer for 2 1/2 years. During that time, OOL imposed several price increases, while Verizon lowered their DSL price and increased its speed. So, I switched.
I ordered DSL online. The first month is free, and subsequent months are $29.95. My understanding is that this rate is permanent, and there will be no price increases for as long as I have the service. There was a $12.95 shipping and handling fee for mailing the modem. If I cancel within the first 12 months, I have to return the modem or pay a $99 fee.
The speed ordered was 1500 kbps down and 384 kbps up. Verizon "over-provisions" the line to account for the overhead. 1500/384 service is actually provisioned at 1792/448.
My "service ready date" was given as 7 days after I ordered. But the service was ready two days early. I was shipped a Westell 2200 (A90-220015-04) DSL modem, 5 inline filters (but no wall mount filter), a telephone cable, an Ethernet cable, and a USB cable. The installation kit arrived just two days after I placed my order. I used a mix of the Verizon-supplied pieces and parts I had from a previous DSL installation.
There were two problems during the ordering process. One was that the online installation status was wrong. If you order, don't bother with the online status page. The other problem was that my line was provisioned for the 768/128 service. I called Verizon's Billing Department to have them reprovision the line for the 1500/384 service. That was done quickly, except that I had to wait for the actual service ready date before they could submit the request.
The service works well, and I get 1492/370 on the speed tests. Verizon claims I'm 11,765 feet from the central office. Email works OK and the newsgroups are much better than OOL's. (On one text newsgroup I check, OOL had only 200 headers, but Verizon had over 14,000 headers!) The account comes with web space, but I haven't tried that yet.
The Westell 2200 modem actually has a PPPoE client and NAT router built-in. Since I have my own Netgear RT314 router, I set the Westell to "bridge mode" so it will operate like a traditional DSL modem, with my router handling PPPoE and NAT.
In summary, Verizon provides good service at reasonable speeds and a very good price. Unless you really need multi-megabit/second speeds, Verizon is a good choice for broadband.
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