HELP....Need new internet provider.

After years of using AOL I've recently been informed that they will no longer be providing DSL service. Between AOL's fee and SBC's charge for DSL I have come to the conclusion that I need to do a little shopping.

Any recommendations ?

thanks

JSM

You can just go with SBC DSL without AOL attached to it.

I'm quite fond of speakeasy's DSL service, but it's rather expensive.

Really, you don't have many choices. Go with Comcast or SBC, or go to www.dslreports.com and look at your choices for non-SBC (kinda) DSL.

If I'm understanding correctly, you have an SBC circuit now and are using AOL as your ISP? As Ed notes, you can just do a pure SBC play. I'm no fan of SBC but I've also had to reprovision my DSL circuit 3 times and it's a royal PITA. SBC is currently about the lowest priced provider in the Chicago area (considerably cheaper than what I pay to cyberonic). If it was me in your situation I'd take the path of least resistance and go SBC. If it wasn't such a hassle, I'd switch myself to save the $$.

A friend in Albany Park has DSL through speakeasy.net and says he's only had a couple of hiccups in the years he's had it. He's running six or seven servers out of his condo (for his own entertainment, I should say, this is not a business for him, but IRC, mail, and Web services have all been reliable). If you want to stick with DSL, I know they have a wide range of plans and good service.

I don't have broadband myself currently but plan when I move to get Comcast's setup. You can't run servers off them (back when Enteract, now RCN, had DSL I was running a couple of servers myself), but other than that it seems like a fair package.

You might also want to scope out www.broadbandreports.com -- I believe that lets you filter by state and perhaps city. I do recommend the Olympic score method of ignoring the best and the worst reviews (or at least taking them with a grain of salt) as some shilling has been known to occur.

I just signed up for SBC for $14.95 per month.

As much as I generally dislike phone companies, their technical support for dial-up and for DSL have been outstanding.

My father is hooked on AOL and has informed me that if you use another ISP (Comcast cable for him), you can remain subscribed to AOL at a greatly reduced price. I think he said under $10/month.

Bob S. wrote:I don't have broadband myself currently but plan when I move to get Comcast's setup. You can't run servers off them (back when Enteract, now RCN, had DSL I was running a couple of servers myself), but other than that it seems like a fair package.

Comcast doesn't officially allow you to run servers, but in my experience they don't port block. That being said, I haven't used them for over a year -- but back then I was able to run my own mail, web, etc servers with no problem on a standard account.

Anyway, I love my speakeasy. I've also got speakeasy's voice over IP, and I'm using their "onelink" service (DSL without phone service from the local telco) to avoid paying SBC a penny directly. Sure, SBC pays them, but I never have to deal with SBC again.

-ed

Hi,

I've had Comcast and now I have SBC DSL at the highest bandwidth (costliest) level of service. I didn't initiate the switch, though it was done because my sister works for SBC. I said I would allow the move if I would notice absolutely no difference in service. It's been a totally transparent move with no problems to report.

I have been keeping AOL for longer than I really wanted. I have it at the lowest service cost (around $14, it used to be under $10) because I don't use them as my ISP. Once I move all the pictures hosted on AOL, I will be closing my account.

As one of the first to have Comcast internet cable in my area, there were service interruptions. Repairs were not always rapid because we were categorized as hobbyist domestic users (ha! all the first clients I met were all working at home). So I kept AOL dial-up as insurance, which I don't feel is needed anymore.

I'm not unhappy with my SBC service and I had no real reason to leave Comcast beyond family politics.

Regards,

gleam wrote:Anyway, I love my speakeasy. I've also got speakeasy's voice over IP, and I'm using their "onelink" service (DSL without phone service from the local telco) to avoid paying SBC a penny directly. Sure, SBC pays them, but I never have to deal with SBC again.

-ed

I have the same set-up as yours, and love it -- although others should be forewarned, speakeasy is very pricey -- my monthly bill after taxes is $92.73. SBC is clearly bleeding money to offer that $15/month service; which they can afford to do, for a while.

Although speakeasy is not cheap, they did lower the VOIP phone portion of the bill from $30 to $24, unexpectedly, a few months back ... that was nice, and representative of how speakeasy keeps its customers happy. The basic DSL service is about $60 a month before taxes, but it comes with some perks, including the fact that you also can ALWAYS get a live (and patient) person, quickly, when you need technical assistance and can't remember which of the 10,000 wires you have to unplug and replug, and in which order, etc. to get your DSL and VOIP modems, broadband router, etc. up and working again. One day, broadband internet service won't require an equipment rack; until that day, speakeasy's high level of customer service is a real comfort.

Indeed, speakeasy's customer service is among the best I've ever dealt with. The Logan Square area point of presence had a number of problems last fall, but they managed to fix it pretty quickly.

Another company that has superb tech support -- better than I would have expected -- is exabyte, maker of tape backup equipment/media. Truly helpful and intelligent people. But I digress.

gleam wrote:Anyway, I love my speakeasy. I've also got speakeasy's voice over IP, and I'm using their "onelink" service (DSL without phone service from the local telco) to avoid paying SBC a penny directly. Sure, SBC pays them, but I never have to deal with SBC again.

We switched to VoIP here at work and I'd never, never adopt it at home. If yours works for you, I can't argue that, but we have frequent outages and my job in particular has been affected by the unreliable service. And the current issue of 2600 serves up an article on how to toy with certain VoIP phones from outside -- I've poked around and found the phones are safely behind our firewall, but I just see too much downtime and risk.

jlawrence01 wrote:I just signed up for SBC for $14.95 per month.

As much as I generally dislike phone companies, their technical support for dial-up and for DSL have been outstanding.

That's the best deal going right now, also you should know that no matter who you buy DSL (not cable) service from in the Chicago area, it's SBC that provides it anyway. They own the infrastructure and everyone else just resells it. I'd skip the middle man if I were you.

stevez wrote:That's the best daql going right now, also you should know that no matter who you buy DSL (not cable) service from in the Chicago area, it's SBC that provides it anyway. They own the infrastructure and everyone else just resells it. I'd skip the middle man if I were you.

If you're shopping strictly on price, that's a good deal, but keep in mind that it's a good idea to read the Terms of Service and privacy agreements closely before deciding. SBC has a co-marketing deal with Yahoo, and Yahoo has one of the worst privacy agreements in the industry. Again, Steve, I'm not disagreeing with you so much as reminding people to double-check the fine print first; for a lot of folks, the tradeoff may well be worth it. For me, even with two filters on my ISP's end and the fairly well-trained filter on my Apple Mail program, some still gets through, and I don't want to open the door to more.

Bob S. wrote:

stevez wrote:That's the best daql going right now, also you should know that no matter who you buy DSL (not cable) service from in the Chicago area, it's SBC that provides it anyway. They own the infrastructure and everyone else just resells it. I'd skip the middle man if I were you.

If you're shopping strictly on price, that's a good deal, but keep in mind that it's a good idea to read the Terms of Service and privacy agreements closely before deciding. SBC has a co-marketing deal with Yahoo, and Yahoo has one of the worst privacy agreements in the industry. Again, Steve, I'm not disagreeing with you so much as reminding people to double-check the fine print first; for a lot of folks, the tradeoff may well be worth it. For me, even with two filters on my ISP's end and the fairly well-trained filter on my Apple Mail program, some still gets through, and I don't want to open the door to more.

Bob,

You could be right. I only use them for the DSL service and have never even checked the sbc.com (or whatever it is) email address they provided with the service. All of my email goes through my own servers, so the privacy thing doesn't affect me. There is probably a filled-up-with-spam mailbox somewhere that I have yet to see or use.

jlawrence01 wrote:I just signed up for SBC for $14.95 per month.

As much as I generally dislike phone companies, their technical support for dial-up and for DSL have been outstanding.

jlawrence,
That's a great price, but how long is that price for? After 3 or 6 months does that price shoot up to $50.00 a month.

Kim wrote:

jlawrence01 wrote:I just signed up for SBC for $14.95 per month.

As much as I generally dislike phone companies, their technical support for dial-up and for DSL have been outstanding.

jlawrence,
That's a great price, but how long is that price for? After 3 or 6 months does that price shoot up to $50.00 a month.

If you order the right package, it's $15/month for the life of your service. The only hitch is you have to agree to a 1 year service contract. After that, you can cancel at will.

gleam wrote:Comcast doesn't officially allow you to run servers, but in my experience they don't port block. That being said, I haven't used them for over a year -- but back then I was able to run my own mail, web, etc servers with no problem on a standard account.

Anyway, I love my speakeasy. I've also got speakeasy's voice over IP, and I'm using their "onelink" service (DSL without phone service from the local telco) to avoid paying SBC a penny directly. Sure, SBC pays them, but I never have to deal with SBC again.

-ed

You can run your own server(s) just fine with Comcast. I've been using a dynamic DNS provider and running a couple *nix boxen on a connection with them for about 5 years now. (In 3 different area codes, at that.)

I'm currently too far from my CO to get more than 384K downstream from a DSL line, so I'm limited to Cable or one of the wireless options.

I quit Comcast and moved to speakeasy in December, because the service at Comcast had become ridiculously slow, like 300 baud slow, molasses in winter slow, and they couldn't offer any explanation or cure. Essentially, I was paying for NO service. All I could figure was that they suckered a lot of people -- probably 10 times as many people as the pipeline could handle -- into buying the service, with no provision for actually giving them service as advertised. Then they left us high and dry. Ten minute waiting periods to log on; websites that either wouldn't load or would load, after about five or ten minutes. It was complete bullshit. So, I dropped them like a hot rock. Maybe they are doing better now? Perhaps they have managed to build infrastructure at a rate approaching the abilities of their incentivized sales reps? Anyway, nowadays Comcast is all about TV for me, and speakeasy provides my internet ... seamlessly, efficiently.

JiLS wrote:nowadays Comcast is all about TV for me, and speakeasy provides my internet ... seamlessly, efficiently.

When our Comcast internet was installed, we had already divorced ourselves from cable. They gave a separate line to our house, then advised if we signed up for cable or if a neighbor signed up for extra services, they would eventually tap into our line and our bandwidth would drop. It became a disincentive for us to consider cable again knowing it was likely going to affect our internet.

Regards,

Strange, because I just connected to AOL DSL this morning. I had been putting off high speed because if I wanted to stick with my AOL email, Comcast or SBC was 29.95 PLUS the cost of AOL. The new package with AOL lets me drop my second phone line and gives me AOL and DSL at a price cheaper than my old AOL dial up price. AOL customer service: 1-800-704-3023.