The Observation Deck

I've had a fairly bad experience with SBC and my DSL and phone, in the last week. It's still not resolved, and after it was supposed to be fixed yesterday, the same problem (random drop off of net connection) occured again. When I called the tech support this morning, they told me to "watch it until 8am tomorrow".

Why? I just had several days of bad service. So, I ask this:

Has anyone else had good or bad experiences internet with SBC?

How about internet with Cox Cable?

Mark--- I have high speed Cox cable internet service. I have been generally pleased with it. The service goes down about every 4 months or so and most of those times seem to be in the very early morning hours so it's up and running for the business day.
I would like to see AT&T take the plunge and offer fiber to the door or CEI to offer it over the neutral power line.
We do need the competition.
Stan Austin

I have been generally pleased with Cox. Ours goes out every now and then also, but not enough to make me switch. The only complaint I have about Cox is that they are high pressure. I called and only wanted high speed internet, they insisted that I had to have cable also. I told them that I would call someone else and amazingly they agreed that I could just have internet service through them. So just an advance warning you do not have to have cable through them to get internet service.

I'm an odd duck (surprise) because I'm in an area (Gold Coast) which is served by Adelphia, not Cox. In general, cable is going to be faster but pricier than DSL. Plus your DSL service is going to depend how far you are from the SBC central office (I think that's on Detroit & Marlowe)
The two complaints I've heard from friends with SBC are the kind of interrmittent outages you've described and the fact that tech support has bee moved to Bangalore. I've heard no complaints about Cox.

[quote="Mark Crnolatas"]I've had a fairly bad experience with SBC and my quote]

I have sbc dsl at my home and business for 2 years now. Home has gone out a few times but the business dsl never has gone out.

I have SBC DSL since 2002 and it has been fine. A drop out here or there over the years but nothing that didn't resolve itself with a modem reboot or giving it a night. I use it for computer and Xbox Live. My bigger question is getting the new bill now that SBC and AT&T are as one (right? I can't keep up). AT&T DSL is better cost than my SBC (even after the 6 month trial period). When I get the new bill I want to see what we are at and how to get it down a few bucks.

Well satisfied with present High Speed Cox internet service ( also have Cox Digital Cable ) and signed up for their new landline Cox100 service with installation scheduled for next week . ( Direct competitor vs SBC stnd "old" landline connection ) . The more you order , the bigger the bill but some bundling discounts also kick in .

I'm very satisfied with SBC DSL. I don't remember ever having to reboot my modem or anything like that. My technical understanding of broadband is rather limited but my understanding is that cable broadband speeds degrade linearly as more people subscribe (unless Cox adds new "cells"), and that is not the case with DSL. What may be faster now may not be in a couple years if too many people in your neighborhood join you. I could be wrong about that though. And residential DSL is actually "ADSL" (asynchronous DSL) where most of the bandwidth is given over to incoming data (web pages, pictures, etc), and there is a lot more of that than there is outgoing data to your ISP. Like I said DSL has worked well enough for me.

SBC doesn't offer usenet to its subscribers. As far as I know, Cox still does. This is an important part of my internet experience.

I've had SBC and we switched over to Cox Cable because of SBC's bad service..

my internet likes to slow down or comlpetely go down whenever it rains really hard or snows really hard.. but not always.

the speed is a nice addition too now that we've been with cable, but you dont realize just how fast cable goes until you're stuck on a DSL computer and think to yourself "man this is going slow"

Test your downstream and upstream internet speed:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Cable speeds will vary considerably day in and day out.

I'm in Cleveland Heights, and my Adelphia tonight is at 150/600. Sucky. But tomorrow it will porbably revert to the normal 300/800.

All cable and DSL connections are throttled. This allows the vendor to offer more bandwidth (the 'premium') at a higher cost. This is especially true with cable vendors. For the most part, on the east side, basic DSL is 2 to 3 times faster than cable.

Compared to consumers in Korea, Japan, and Canada and France, high bandwidth users in the United States pay high prices for slower internet connections. Japan, for example, offers internet connections 100 (!) times faster than the US for about two times what the average home connection costs here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access

All this time and MAYBE, the disconnecting issue has been taken care of by SBC, as of 4:30pm Today. The service people seemed helpful, but I did get a less than pleasant woman who answered, when I called to report the recurrance of the problem that started early in the week.

It was one of those "Why would I call to report a problem if there wasn't a problem?" things. She doubted I had a phone problem. I doubt many people just call the phone company on a lark, and tell them they have phone line problems, plus dsl disconnects.

So, I HOPE this is the end of THIS episode of the saga of the mysterious random disconnects of both voice and data.

Note: Turned out to be squirrels chewing through the wires. The first service guy that came out said it was replaced, but I'm not sure what "it" means, at this point.

SBC, ah yes. At 359am (March 12) the disconnects started again.

Squirrels chewed through the line in less than 10 hrs maybe?
Why do I doubt this?

Perhaps specially trained - "Terrorist - Squirrels " attacking selective Lakewood Targets ? On the job Training prior to the main Attack ?

Not that it is what your paid for this "service" but does SBC give credit for each outage - If so - some small consolation - If not write Mr Big Boy and FCC etc

Stephen Calhoun wrote:
I'm in Cleveland Heights, and my Adelphia tonight is at 150/600. Sucky. But tomorrow it will porbably revert to the normal 300/800.

For the most part, on the east side, basic DSL is 2 to 3 times faster than cable.

Mr. Calhoun.

You need to let those moths out of your wallet. If that's your cable experience, you're paying for Adelphia's discount service. The standard cable internet is running at least twice as fast as DSL. My friend who is an Adelphia subscriber in Shaker regularly tests 2.7-2.8 megabits. SBC's standard service promises you "up to" 1.5.
As I have been told, internet is an unregulated service, so contacting either PUCO or the FCC is futile. SBC, of course, is aware of this.
Cable is the answer, at least untli the power companies and cell providers get in the game.