[UFO Chicago] My DSL Woes...

[Larry Garfield]

And the moral is, DSL companies suck. ;-)

Apropos of which, however, I'm in the market for a broadband et al
connection currently.  I know we discussed this once before, but that
was a long time ago and several companies have gone bankrupt since then,
so I suppose its worthwhile having it again. Location is right by
Sheffield and Wellington, next to the Red/Brown/Purple line.

We're looking for phone, broadband, and possibly cable, maybe from one
company maybe not.  According to RCN, we need to get an Ameritech dial
tone before we do anything else.  (Damn you Telecomm Act of 1996!) 
After that...

Ameritech is offering phone service for $50/month total, with a couple
of included features.  They have a couple of packages available for DSL,
but the most appealing is $65/month for 768/128 kbps down/up and 5
static IPs.  They're also waving equipment costs as part of a sale right
now.

RCN offers an everything package (Elliot, I think Nate said you've got
this now?) that is $125/month for phone, cable, and cable modem, for
800/200 down/up, with up to 4 dynamic IPs.  Static IPs, though, are
ANOTHER $125/month, PER ADDRESS.  Youch.

Speakeasy has a bajillion different plans, the nice ones being around
$60/month for 608/128 down/up with 2 static IPs.  I know Nate really
likes his Speakeasy account, or his old one at any rate.

Does anyone have experience with any of these guys they'd like to
share?  Any other providers you recommend looking into?  Any other
gotchas?

For the record, telecomm sales people are almost as evil as they are
incompetent.  I kept asking the guy at RCN about static addresses, and
he kept telling me about web hosting, and then that they don't offer
static IPs yet because their Chicago sales staff doesn't know how to
fill out the forms for that yet.  Right.

"Peter A. Peterson II" wrote:

> So we're having a "vendor meet" tomorrow -- Ameritech, Worldcom, and
> Tastytronic Industries, and hopefully Ameritech will at least
> reconnect my pair, or put me on a new one, so that we can at least
> continue to try and troubleshoot this problem.
> 
> What a mess.
> 
> Peter

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
lgarfiel@students.depaul.edu	ICQ: 6817012

-- "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you." :-)