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Review by weedahoe 
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 4.9 years, 719 visits, last login: 52 days ago
 North Metro,Gwinnett,GA
 $38 per month (12 month contract)
 about 2 days
 BellSouth
CLEC party: BellSouth
 "fast provisioning (2 days), easy install, excellent speeds"
 "starting to see connectivity issues"
 "dont want anything else.....love the speeds"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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We ordered dial tone and DSL on 9-09-03, the dial tone was on that day, the DSL was on 2 DAYS LATER!! We connected the modem and was on instantly. The speeds were great up and down. The modem/router is completely plug and play and accessable with its default gateway address. The cable company wanted the same price ( 49.95 ) as Bellsouth except that they wanted to charge $5 a month for a modem rentel fee, PLUS they wanted to charge extra for another IP, thier upload was slower than Bellsouth, plus Bellsouth's modem is a DHCP server which I can use with a $25 ethernet hub versus a $60-$100 router. I get 1.4Mbps down and 220Kbps up. I love to play the online games and the modem/router works GREAT with them. I have nothing to complain about with Bellsouth service.
UPDATE: Its 3-03-04 and things are still great. Speeds are still great and connection is realible. I upgraded from the Westell to the 2wire and love it even more. I run 2PC's through a hub and the other WLAN. I haven't had any outages and really have always had good service. Being we both have cell phones we have no need to a landline. As soon as we can qualify as SAFA ( Stand Alone Fast Access ) we will drop our landline. It simply isn't needed. Plus I hear BS is coming out with 3Mb so I am interested in it. I don't know how true it is but I am sure they will have to do something to keep up with the cable companies. Overall, I am happy with my service and enjoy it everytime I am on it ( which is a lot ).
UPDATE: Ok, on 4-12-04 I ordered the new DSL X-treme that morning. By that night we were getting the speeds. The person at Sales forgot to give me my static IP ( and I forgot to ask ) so I has to call in and get it. Speeds are great! I am hitting consistant 2.8 to 2.9Mb down and on average of 360's up. We went from the Westell to the 2wire and have had no problem there either. The 2wire did die on us after about 9 months but they replaced it. I haven't had an issue with the newsgroups. My connection is good. I haven't ever caught it dropping out. Webmail is slow so I use Outlook so no problems there either. Overall it is a good service. We haven't had any bad issues at all. I recommend BS if you can get it.
UPDATE: 12-26-04 Well we still have DSL Xtreme and have never been in an outage, my speeds are always around 2.7-2.8 down. I use a FTP program between my friends and I and we had no problem setting it up after we got the port mapping in order. We have switched from the Westell 2200 to the 2wire 1000SW and now the 2wire 1700HW which we all love. We have never noticed an issue with email although I use Opera 800b1 for a browser and email client. I dont get ANY spam but then again I dont give my email address to anyone and everyone either. I have my newsgroups setup ( again through Opera ) and havent seen any issues but then again I rarely get on them as I spend my time in other forums and sites. Overall we are extremely happy with the service. We run two XP SP2 Pro desktops and an XP SP2 Pro laptop and my XBox is downstairs on XBox Live. I am a heavy user and use a lot of bandwidth. I know I have done well at 150Gb download on one particular month with BT and have not ever got any letter saying I had any download limit. I would seriously welcome more upload and download speeds. I know we just got DSL Xtreme last April but I am greedy. More speed means I can get more done. I do remote access my PC with 3rd party software and we have D-link wireless cameras I can remote access also. When we got DSL Xtreme we were given the SIP I can honestly say it has come in handy more times then a few. Overall, we love where we are at.
UPDATE: 3-24-05 We have had our speed bump like most others for DSL Xtreme. I am set at 3552/384 and can notice the half meg more down. All I can say is our speeds have always been consistant and stable. I have never had an issue with the email. My webpage is always there and accessable. I did see a small window where the DNS dropped out a few weeks back but it was after midnight and I assumed they were doing work on the network. By the following morning everything was fine. With all the competition from other providers I would like to see either more speed for my money or charge a little less. But overall we are happy with our service.
UPDATE: 6-9-05 I can say I am still happy with our service and speeds but am looking for more flexibility. We have has BS FA ADSL for over 2 years now and very rarely use the landline. My wife and I both have cell phones and so we use them tirelessly. With the recent talk of BS given the opportunity to offer 'naked DSL' I am seriously looking forward to it. I am tired of having to pay for a landline I don't use. Even though it is a basic line with no features it is still extra money we could be putting somewhere else.
On a side note I see where it is also be spoken on that BS will offer 6megs. All I can say is it they had better start dropping the cost as the cable company is looking more and more better for speed and cost. Hey Bellsouth, I like the service and it is good but it is also EXPENSIVE when compared to others companies giving the same thing. Get with it or find yourself out on the street because you won't be staying with me any longer.
UPDATE: 6-20-05 on 6-20-05 ( Friday ) we called BS to notify them we were moving over the weekend and needed both our dialtone and DSL forwarded. Well the 17th was a Friday and the 20th was a Monday. On Monday morning at about 12:17am I noticed we got disconnected. I rebooted the 2wire and it didn't connect so I figured they were working on it. We still had dialtone but by 8am later that morning there wasn't any dialtone. Since we were in the last part of moving we went over to the other home and after I connected the phone to had dialtone. So I went in the office and connected the 2wire. It sync'ed up and connected on its own. So this was a very VERY flawless move. Where we were at we had DSL Extreme and where we are at now we have DSL Xtreme so I am happy. I really didnt want to go to cable. THX Bellsouth!!.
UPDATE: 7-14-05 Well money isnt as exactly flowing everywhere around here. BS wants $55 for 3.0x384 with SIP and our cable company wants $40 for 3.0x256 w/o SIP. So we called to cancel and BS did give us a break on the price for a few months but we'll see afterwards when that time is up. I know I can set everything up with NO-IP for a domain name so I can still remote access and do other things. BS, better look out......I like you but you are greedy and will get cut soon if something doesnt change.
UPDATE: 11-23-05 With all the talk about BS DSL going 6mg I decided to wait and see what would happen. ACTUALLY......I did call the local cable and inquired about their services and the fastest they currently offered are 5mg down and ONLY 256k UP. You hav2 GOT to be joking me right? What the hell I am to do with only 256k up?? So I placed an order for 6*512 with BS and that was this morning. I have a domain setup so I can remote access back home from work or where ever. While at work I tried to remote and couldnt so no big deal. BUT when i got home i chked my port stats in my 2wire and this is what i show
DSL Down Up
Current Rate: 6664 kbs 512 kbs
Max Rate: 6664 kbs 936 kbs
Current Connection:
Current Noise Margin 12.0 dB 12.0 dB
Current Attenuation 50.0 dB 30.0 dB
Current Output Power 19.5 dB 11.9 dB
UPDATE: 4-26-06 I was on the net the other night and lost connection. It was about 11pm so I though maybe they were doing maintenance. I called the helpdesk to check and they didnt have any outages declared. So I thought no big deal and I will just wait a while. I made sre the billing was straight ( you know how BS is about thier money ) and everything was cool. Being I had to go out of town for a short trip I thought I would check it when I got back. It was about 4.30am when I rolled back through my front door and I noticed I still had no sync. I called back into the HD and got the same story. I humored the guy that wanted me to remove phones and filters so they could troubleshoot. It was quite easy because we have to phones in the home other than our cell phones which also means we do not run any filters. They run thier little tests and said everthing was fine. I said I would call back later in the morning as it was late ( 5am ) and I had to go to work on the morning. I called my wife later that day and found we still had no sync so she called in and got a truck rolled to us. I wasnt there when the tech came out but wish I would have been because my wife said he argued with her about how it had to be inside our home that was causing the issue. Now mind you we already knew th is wasnt true because I connected our old 2WIRE up and didnt get any sync on it and then I used a cut phone line with gator clips on it to patch into the NID to check for sync. So the genius BST ( sarcasm ) proceeds to reset my Westell 327 and wipe out all my port forwarding and triggering as well as my limited DHCP addressing and WPA encryption with MAC filtration only to find out it wasnt thier damned Westell 327. After checking the NID he finds he has no sync ( Doh!! ). THX for screwing up my router guys. So he climbs the pole and finds something wrong. Whatever it was he fixed it ( or so he thought ) and left after setting back up the W327 with PPPoE and WEP. When I get home from work we have no sync again. So we call back into the HD and ask for another truck who comes out the next day and climbs back up the pole. Now the really odd thing here is he says his tests come back showing we are at 19k feet and would have issues getting 3mb. If anyones reads my posts before this one, they will see we had 6mb service with good noise margins. So the tech wants to have the field engineers out to take a look at the line. Being I am a Electrical Engineer with heavy mechanical background I welcomed this as I would expect to get more answers to my growing list of questions. However, I have not seen any field engineer and no one has called my back. This all happened yesterday and the day before so we will see. Currently, these are my line stats I am posting which are copied and pasted from the GUI of my W327. When it lightly rained today we lost sync again so it looks like another tech will have to come out. Anyway, just FYI to everyone, 6mb was great to up but the price of it v/s the 3mb was too great and thus the reason for our downgrade. For any BS personel who may read this... get your crap together because the only reason we have your landlind is to get the DSL. My wife has been on my back for some time now wanting to change over to cable for the price savings as well as faster speed for the price.
DSL Sync Rate (Kbits/Sec) 3552 down 384 up
SN Margin (db) 12.0 down 16.0 up
Line Attenuation (db) 48.5 down 31.0 up
UPDATE: 1-25-07 Ok, so BS has been real good to us. I have spoken about how good their service was to us since we've had them and it still is. I have also spoken about budget cuts as well. It seems BS isn't following what thier competition is doing in my area. If they are, then they certainly are not reacting to it in a fast enough manner. I say that to say this. Each month we pay $38 for the phone (which we dont want, need or use) and $38 for the DSL 3mb Xtreme. So total is about 70-80 per month for pretty much just DSL. No one has our house number b/c we dont use it. We use our cells for everything. What is really craxy is the phone bill for the phone itself.
Lemme give a break down real quick:
Residential Line Includes Touch-Tone $14.95
Late Payment Charge on Regulated Balance $3.00
Interest Charge on Regulated Balance .65
Federal Excise Tax $.76
GA - State/Local Tax 1.08
GA - Atlanta License Tax $.45
FCC Authorized Charge for Network Access 6.50
Federal Universal Service Charge .59
Inside Wire Maintenance Service Plan $5.95 (which we have cancelled 3x)
Interest Charge on Unregulated Balance $1.90
Telecommunications Relay Service Fund $.05
Emergency 911 Charge. This charge is billed on behalf of the city of Atlanta. 1.50
This is rediculous. While I understand most of this is beyond BS itself, it is rediculous that I pay $24 in extra charges for a basic and stripped $14 phone line.
On top of this we use Dish Network for our televisions. This is another $40 a month.
So Mediacom calls the other night. My wife and I had been talking about making changes to lower our monthly costs. Well it seelms Mediacom is willing to do basic cable PLUS thier internet for a flat $40 a month and that includes the HBO and Showtime for a total channel package of 70 channels. The internet is 5Mb down and 512 up. So the breakdown on this bill is $30 for television cable and $10 for internet cable. There was free installation and this price was promised to us @ $40 a month for a year with no contract. This includes thier modem with no modem rental fee as well. Like I said, everything for a flat $40. My wife and I talked about it but it didnt take much talking. We agreed and they came out 2 daus later and did the install. We have older coax so the guy re-ran new cable under the house and had everything up and running in about 45mins to an hour. We currently still have BS but that is so we can have our mail forwarded and get our addresses changed everywhere. But in the next day or two they will be geting a call from us to disconnect the service.
BellSouth or ATT&T, whoever, I warned you guys about your prices a few months ago. I know it isnt like my little 'blog' here is going to make a major difference but I suspect as they see thier other customer leave and migrate, then they will begin to pay more attention. We were paying approx $120 a month for phone, DSL and sat. Now we pay $40 a month for cable TV and net. If you were us, what would you do. We cut out entertainment exspenses by 2/3 and get faster internet
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AT&T Southeast
(86)
(83)
Misleading overall