Review by zentec 
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 7.8 years, 53 visits, last login: 202 days ago
 Maybee,Monroe,MI
 $29 per month
 Verizon (ex GTE)
 "Good Performance, Good Service, Great Pricing"
 "Support can be iffy"
 "Satisfied Customer"
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(ratings match consensus)
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I ordered Verizon's DSL a year ago when I was looking to get off Charter's increasingly expensive cable service. I had been using Voicepulse VOIP, and when I compared prices, I found POTS dial service and DSL to be cheaper than Charter Pipeline and Voicepulse. The E911 capabilities of POTS were a no-brainer.
I originally contracted for the 1.5/384 service from Verizon for one year at $29.99. Verizon assured me that I could easily get the 1.5 meg service, even though I'm 13,000 feet from the remote terminal. Verizon installed the dial service in seven business days and the Westel 61xx modem arrived the day after dial service was installed. I installed a Secor DSL splitter ($20 on eBay) instead of using Verizon's line filters. Two weeks later, Verizon informed me of my service start date, and my DSL started working after that date. It's PPPoe service, which I have controlled by a Linksys WRT-54GL using DD-WRT.
I had a habit of calling Verizon's support and asking if I qualified for a speed increase. Generally, they'd check the records and tell me no. But a few weeks ago after reading DSLReports, it looked like they might just do it. I called and the Verizon support agent informed me that my speed would be increased that day, and it was. I'm now on the 3 meg/768 service.
Service has been great. I highly recommend their DSL service. I suppose if there's line quality issues, DSL can be a nightmare. but I'm over 13,000 feet away from the CO/RT at 3 megabits with fastpath and it has been solid.
I admit, I was reluctant to take the leap off of Charter's service, but their increasing prices and declining service and speeds had me looking elsewhere. By the time the POTs and DSL service are added up, I'm at where I was trying to save money with VoIP and Charter.
Update 5/2008
The smooth ride is over! For the past several months, evening speeds have been bad to intolerable. Last night was a blistering 200k download.
I've filed two support tickets with Verizon Direct and while extremely helpful, the truth is that nothing is wrong with my line. My problem stems from a highly congested router on Verizon's network and Verizon appears to be doing nothing about it.
I am tolerant of network issues, but 200k and up to 90% packet loss is unacceptable. I've taken on Charter's 10/1 plan on a promo rate and we'll see how that pans out. I hate to leave Verizon, it's been actually quite good up until the last few months. But seeing how they don't seem to see a problem, I'll take my business elsewhere.
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