Review by openbox9 
UPDATED: 1.2 years ago
member for 5.8 years, 2120 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Navarre,Santa Rosa,FL
 $36 per month
 about 6 days
 AT&T
 "Extremely pleasanant and helpful sales department"
 "Mandated use of installation disc, latency and flaky stability"
 "Decent service for the price, but nothing great"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I switched from cable to AT&T about three weeks ago, primarily to save money. I also have read several statements claiming DSL's stability, especially in the former Bellsouth region so I wanted to sample a solid DSL connection.
The setup and installation was quick as painless. The phone sales discussion answered all of my questions, without me even asking some of them. For example, towards the end of the conversation, the rep told me the total cost, including all taxes and fees without me even questioning the price. My modem arrived via UPS in a couple of days and the drop was connected to my house of couple of days after that (new house, never connected to POTS before). Following the quickstart guide, the modem was synced and operational in less than 10 minutes. My only real complaint is AT&T's lame requirement to use their install CD to setup my account. I tried to not use it, including some documentation found around this site, but ultimately has to surrender and use the disc. NOTE to ATT: Not all of your customers are inept users, please provide an installation option without the use of questionable software.
Once service was setup and running, I promptly conducted several throughput tests and latency checks. Download throughput was great and often exceeded my 6 Mbps service. Upload was not so good, often attaining throughput of around 400 Kbps for my 512 Kbps service. Latency was mediocre compared to my previous cable connection. Ironic since I've often read how DSL shines with latency issues compared to cable service. Throughput and latency have slowly decayed over the few weeks that I've had service. There are decent times and not so decent times. Another irony since a lot of reading points towards the stability and consistency of DSL. Once again, DSL loses to my previous cable connection in this realm.
The bottom line is that I was able to cut my bill in half by dropping cable and moving to DSL service, POTS phone, and sat TV. The DSL service quality isn't as good as my previous cable connection, but for half the price, I'll live with it....for now.
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