Review by fivebyfive 
UPDATED: 2 years ago
member for 3 years, 46 visits, last login: 105 days ago
 Morgan Hill,Santa Clara,CA
 $30 per month (12 month contract)
 about 10 days
 Verizon (ex GTE)
 "Fast, reliable service"
 "33% price bump-up after first 12 months"
 "Solid DSL service, albeit a bit pricey"
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Install Co-ordination:
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(ratings match consensus)
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I ordered 1.5 Mbps Verizon Online DSL with dynamic IP in late November 2004 to get high speed Internet service for a home-based business. The service was promised in about a week and the self-installation kit arrived a few days before the DSL service was scheduled to be activated. The contract term was 12 months at $29.95 per month, with a stiff charge for early cancellation. I was given 30 days to cancel with no penalty if I were to find that DSL service didn't work satisfactorily. My service location is just under 4500 feet from the central office.
I never had high speed Internet service at my house before, but knowing that I would have to install DSL filters at every telephone device, I took preemptive action by finding a DSL filter at an electronics surplus store that I could easily cannibalize for the working circuit with flying wire leads and discard the bulky packaging. This I installed outside the house in Verizon's TNI box, splitting the DSL signal from the telephone lines. Several years ago I had started to replace the 2-pair POTS wiring piecemeal in my late-1950s house with CAT5 cables, and already had a CAT5 branch laid to the room where my computer was. It was a simple matter of putting the DSL signal on the #2 wire pair, leaving the telephones and answering machine on the #1 pair. At the RJ-11 wall jack I used a two-line RJ-11 adapter to put the phone and answering machine on the Line 1 port and the DSL line on the Line 2 port. When the Verizon installation kit arrived, I had the network interface card installed in the computer and DSL modem hooked up in short order. I never used the filters provided in the installation kit. Within 24 hours thereafter the DSL service was turned on, and using the installation CD provided in the kit I was online with Verizon. The installation was uneventful and essentially trouble-free. The only hitch was that Verizon shipped the kit with a Westell VersaLink 327W Gateway, but the PDF user manual on the CD was for a different model of modem. It took a call to Verizon customer service and a day or so for a reply email to get a link to download the correct documentation. (I later learned that one can get the VersaLink 327W Gateway working with one's system without the use of the Verizon CD, since the 327W is accessible through a web browser by entering »192.168.1.1/ into the location window. It just means that one would have to enter the router settings by hand, but it would also avoid the annoyance of Verizon's intrusive software on the computer.)
I stayed with Verizon Online for nearly two years. Having been an EarthLink dial-up customer since 1998, I retained my EarthLink POP3 email account during this time. Essentially, I was paying for two ISPs, but now using only half of each one's services. The cumbersome, disorganized look of Verizon's web site discouraged me from dropping EarthLink and using Verizon's POP3 email.
After my 12-month contract with Verizon expired, they raised the fee to $39.95 per month. I decided to switch to EarthLink DSL, which had recently become available in Morgan Hill. The incentive was the promise of saving about $22 per month by getting email and DSL from a single provider. So, just about 24 months after signing up with Verizon I've switched.
During the time I was with Verizon the service was good, actual performance being more than ten times as fast as 56K dial-up. I enjoyed the Westell 327W modem, which included an 802.11b/g wireless access point, router and excellent hardware firewall that made my computer invisible to the world. I lost the connection twice, but a modem reboot had me back online in just a few minutes each time. I never had to call for support due to technical issues. I'd have no reservations recommending Verizon Online to friends, and will certainly consider returning to them when they deploy FiOS here.
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