From: "Loren Wilton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > I have a verizon dsl as a secondary broadband connection. It took just
> > over 2 months (38 days) from the date it was installed to the date it
> > actually worked. Since then its been extremely reliable. If you can
deal
> > with the setup headaches (9 phone calls in total) then it really is a
good
> > deal for the price.
>
> Um, 38 days is a little over ONE month, last I looked. :-)
>
> Realize that Verizon was originally two companies. On the West it was
GTE,
> which had a moderately good but not sterling reputation for providing
decent
> service (in both meanings of the word). On the east of the country it was
> one of the baby bells, I've forgotten which, that had absolutely the worst
> reputation for being able to provide either working phones or even excuses
> for not fixing them.
>
> For a good long time after the merger and name change not a whole lot
really
> changed. The west coast still had reasonably decent service, and the east
> coast and south still sucked bigtime. It was NOT homogonous across the
> country. Most people don't realize this, and as the larger part of the
> country had the non-GTE experience, they have problems understanding why
> some people will defend Verizon even a little.
>
> I'm in GTE-land. Verizon Wireless service in the suburbia where I live
has
> ALWAYS been and STILL is vastly superior to any of the other services for
> connectivity. ATT in particular is virtually useless. I realize that
this
> isn't universal across the country. I'm just pointing out that the
opposite
> isn't universal either! :-)
>
> As far as getting DSL, GTE/Verizon doesn't have a wonderful reputation IF
> you try to get the DSL service from the phone company. The general belief
> starts out with "you want what?" and then moves to "it must be your fault
if
> it doesn't work".
>
> Knowing this, I got DSL from Earthlink. It cost less than Verizon was
> charging. I got the DSL modem about 10 days ahead of when Earthlink said
> I'd get it from Hong Kong or wherever it was sent. They said it would
take
> 2 weeks to get DSL carrier. I plugged the modem in when I got it. There
> was carrier, and it worked. Absolutely NO problems. Guess who really
> supplied the service? Right: Verizon. With no problems.
<cough> *I* hooked it up and made it run - with a hub and a load of the
Earthlink Windows 98 TotalAccess. That remained long enough to figure out
it was PPPoE they used and get that running on the Linux firewall.
> About 6 months later Verizon updated their routers and screwed things up
so
> DSL didn't work. I called Earthlink support (which was still in the US
> then) and got someone who actually understood networking. He took about
30
> seconds to discover what Verizon had done and sent them a trouble ticket.
> DSL was woring again next morning. I suspect I'd still be waiting if I
had
> had to talk to Verizon tech support, and that was 4 years ago.
Yeah, it was a pleasure dealing with the techs who knew something before
Earthlink Offshored it all. Ah well, Since then line noise has been a
bit of a problem. (We have OLD OLD wiring here. And the stuff on the street
is near its REAL end of life. Many pairs are too noisy to use I hear.)
{^_^}
