Review by slyphoxj 
UPDATED: 115 days ago
member for 6.4 years, 1729 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Brook Park,Cuyahoga,OH
 $35 per month
 about 6 days
 AT&T
 "Fast U/L for the price, low latency, included dialup, WYSIWYP pricing, no contract"
 "Lingering upgrade/downgrade issue, poor phone support"
 "Elite tier is a good deal for the money. Wish the 768k tier was less than $20 w/no contract"
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Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I've had AT&T (formerly SBC) DSL since February 2006. Before then, I had Adelphia cable modem service for almost 5 years (5/2001 - 2/2006). Adelphia was great, but the much lower prices of AT&T/SBC DSL at the time enticed me to jump ship from Adelphia. I was just happy to have the option to pay less for less speed and still be able to get on the 'net without tying up my phone line.
Ordering: If I remember correctly, I ordered the Express tier (~1500/384). I don't remember exactly what the monthly cost was... I think it was around $20/month, maybe less, after taxes and fees. Order-to-live took 6 days. My DSL modem, a 2Wire non-wireless model with built-in firewall, arrived before the 6th day. If I remember correctly, when I ordered DSL for my sister back in Nov. 2004, she had sync in less than 6 days, but I believe her line was directly connected to the CO while mine goes to an RT.
I then later decided that Express wasn't fast enough and went to Pro for a good price, the back to Express if I remember right, then eventually to Elite after the u/l on Elite was raised to 768 and the price lowered to $34.99 about 2 years ago.
Reliability: Very reliable overall, but in the time I've had DSL, I've had more outages than I did with Adelphia. My line is clean and supports the full Elite speeds with no issues (I'm ~3200 FT from the RT). I didn't have to do anything to my inside wiring since I've had DSL other than hook up the filters.
What I like:
- 20ms lower latency than cable modems
- No extra charge dialup account included
- Free Wi-Fi access at McDonald's and other places with Elite
- OK (or at least used to be)? to run personal web or other server- cable won't let you do this
- What You See Is What You Pay pricing (well, almost, except for the penny discrepancy). AT&T eliminated the extra taxes/fees back in the fall of 2006. By WYSIWYP, I mean that my credit card is actually charged $34.99, the price advertised on the AT&T web site (well, actually, today (8/7/08), the AT&T site is advertising $35 even for Elite, but it's just a freekin' penny!)
- Wealth of info here on DSLR in the AT&T Midwest forum and access to AT&T DSL techs in the AT&T Direct forum.
- Much easier to get info about pricing, max speeds terms & conditions from AT&T web site than Time Warner's site
What I'm not happy about:
- Price hikes on all tiers except Elite a few month back
- Upgrading/downgrading to another speed package. They've always taken about 6 days to complete... why?? AT&T should have this down pat by now... shouldn't be more than 2 business days max IMHO. And after the speed changes goes through, I *always* have to put in a request in the AT&T Direct forum to get my Redback profile corrected after a tier upgrade/downgrade to get the full downstream speed I'm paying for. This has been an ongoing issue for several years, even long before I switched to DSL.
- People going to the Pro package (3000/512) fed from an RT and running Windows XP have to remember to (re)tweak their TCP settings to get the correct speeds.
- Poor outsourced phone support. What would I do if it weren't for AT&T Direct and AT&T Midwest forums here on DSLR?
Overall, my AT&T DSL service is a good deal. I was paying $39.95 back in May 2001 for 3000/128 on Adelphia Powerlink (the $39.99 included the modem lease- no option to buy your own modem at the time). Now I'm paying $34.99 for 5000/650 (actual speeds). The DSL modem only cost $12.95 for shipping.
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