{"id":425,"date":"2005-07-22T12:01:04","date_gmt":"2005-07-22T16:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=425"},"modified":"2005-07-22T14:16:23","modified_gmt":"2005-07-22T18:16:23","slug":"the-long-strange-road-back-to-dsl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=425","title":{"rendered":"The long, strange road back to DSL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those of you patient enough to regularly check this site have seen my ongoing frustration with Comcast High Speed Internet and their constant issues<\/a>. Being a net junky, I just can’t get by without some form of high speed data service… I simply feel naked without it. This isn’t a good feeling when your cable modem constantly fizzles out on you when you so much as beam negative thoughts towards it. Finally, after yet another particularly long net outage, I gave up on cable, and decided, after a long, thought-to-be-permanent departure, to give DSL<\/a> a try.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My first experience with Verizon’s<\/a> high speed internet service (if you could call it that at the time) was back in 2000, when they were still Bell Atlantic in my area, just prior to the big merger with GTE. Back then, the best I could get was 640k down\/128k up, and service was LOUSY. Outages were frequent and for long periods of time, coordination of repair was terrible, and ultimately, I just got fed up and went to cable (Optimum Online<\/a>), and didn’t look back for 5 years.<\/p>\n

Then I moved out of Optimum Online territory, and boy did I realize then how spoiled I had been. My transition from OOL to Comcast was, in a word, terrible. Outages on Comcast were about as frequent as they used to be when I was on old Bell Atlantic. There was the big DNS outage<\/a> that lasted for a while. Tech support was clueless. And finally, the last straw was when one night, their system somehow “forgot” that I had broadband internet access (though you’d better believe that the billing system still remembered), and would only allow me to pull up the new customer signup page no matter where I tried to browse to.<\/p>\n

So, Comcast was ditched. And I decided that, after 5 years of proudly proclaiming that Verizon wasn’t getting a cent from me, I had to admit that trying them again REALLY couldn’t be worse than continuing to deal with Comcast. So my next steps were 1. Get a landline from Verizon, and 2. order DSL on it.<\/p>\n

My major objection to Verizon DSL continues to be that voice landline service is required in order to get it. They really need to start offering naked DSL. As I currently have Vonage, and decent cell phone service, a landline is mostly irrelevant to me, but now that DSL was the choice I had to make, I’m forced to have a landline again. So I ordered a POTS<\/a> line on July 7th along with my DSL order, and had dialtone<\/a> two days later, on the lowest possible, “low use message rate service<\/a>” tier, with no extra features (no free local calling, or even touch tone dialing). So far, so good.<\/p>\n

Time passes and I hear nothing about the DSL order, so I call up verizon online. Sure enough, they have no record of any order placed by me. Great! So I place ANOTHER order for DSL. I’m given a Service Ready Date (SRD)<\/a> of July 19th. Now, the fun begins.<\/p>\n

First, my line pre-qualifies, but for whatever reason, the Mechanized Loop Test (MLT)<\/a> used to formally qualify my line was “delayed” and couldn’t be performed right away. No idea why. They ship the installation kit anyway but otherwise, the status of my order just stalls from that point on.<\/p>\n

Then, on Friday July 15th, I mysteriously lose dial tone, and calls to that phone number result in a busy signal. I call POTS repair, and they have no idea why this is. They run a test on the line and insist everything is fine. After doing some diagnostics (unplug all phones, wait 30 minutes, then plug back in), they finally submit a repair order.<\/p>\n

The issue doesn’t get resolved until 4:00 p.m. on Monday July 18th; still no explanation, just a pink Verizon repair order shows up on my doorstep that afternoon with “NWFI” and “N\/C” scribbled on it, and nothing else (none of the fields were even filled in). Boy, I’m glad I still have my cell phone (Cingular) and don’t actually rely on the landline voice service for anything. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

Anyway, during this time, I call up and ask whether or not the outage is going to affect the SRD. They say no. Just a couple hours later, I get informed by e-mail (the neighbors let me “borrow” a connection off their wireless access point while I was without broadband) that the SRD was in fact moved to July 20.<\/p>\n

Wonderful.<\/p>\n

But, just on the off chance that things might have moved along, I plug in the modem from the installation kit on the night of 19th. Sure enough, it syncs right up! I pop in the CD, create my account, deflect all the tons of toolbars and other crappy software baggage that Verizon wants to install on my machine, and presto! My broadband is fully functioning, 3MB down\/768 up. Great!<\/p>\n

Or so I think. The following morning, I get the following e-mail from Verizon:<\/p>\n

\nThank you for your order for Verizon Online DSL service! Your DSL order is still being processed, however, we are experiencing a delay in activating the service on your telephone number xxx-xxx-xxxx. We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience.<\/p>\n

Your revised estimated Service Ready Date is 07-28-2005 after 6pm.<\/p>\n

Every effort is made to prevent this sort of delay and we apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll keep you updated by e-mail and will confirm by telephone when DSL service is ready on your telephone line.<\/p>\n

As a reminder, please note that although your phone number pre-qualified for DSL in the initial stages of the order process, further processing may reveal that DSL service cannot be provided on your line.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I just kinda chuckle at this, seeing as of course, I’m reading this e-mail while plugged into my already activated Verizon DSL on the very line on which they say installation has been delayed another 8 days.<\/p>\n

It’s been about 48 hours since I activated my service, and so far it’s been flawless. 3Mbps down\/768k up. I have no complaints at all so far regarding connectivity. However, I’m still very concerned about the fact the left hand at Verizon still doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Verizon Online STILL thinks my service isn’t ready, and that it’s still tentatively scheduled for the 28th, even though my account is active. I called up tech support to advise them of this, and basically all they can say is that I shouldn’t be surprised if my connectivity is spotty between now and my new SRD.<\/p>\n

How lovely.<\/p>\n

The fact that there has been no spottiness at all is encouraging, but the lack of knowledge about my account status from the people who certainly SHOULD know is very disconcerting. My worst fear right now is that someone at Verizon might decide that my line doesn’t qualify for DSL (as the email above states could happen) and cancel the order and the service, even though it’s worked beautifully so far.<\/p>\n

I’ll update this review as soon as Verizon figures out what they’ve done, assuming they ever do. I sincerely hope it works out.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: the service is great once you have it installed, and the speed is wonderful for the price point given ($19.99\/month for the first three months, then $29.99 a month after that… the charges for the barebones POTS line and taxes add another $10 to this). But the problem is getting the service! The install process is lengthy, and fileld with all kinds of potential hurdles, and the lack of organization and communication at Verizon only makes things worse. I just hope the connection stays reliable, and makes the trouble I’ve had so far worth the effort.<\/p>\n

——————————————————<\/p>\n

Update: Well, they finally figured it out. On July 21, I get an e-mail:<\/p>\n

Congratulations and welcome to Verizon Online DSL!<\/p>\n

Your Verizon Online DSL service is ready on telephone line xxx-xxx-xxxx.
\n[rest snipped]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it took them a while, but it looks like all is well. So far. I’m still smarting from the rough ride they call “installation,” but as long as the service continues to be reliable, everything should be fine. This review will get updated as time goes by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After dealing with Comcast, I give up on cable modems and go back to DSL. And here is my review of the ordeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}