DSL Recomendations?

[Cloral]

I'm switching away from my local cable company to a DSL company. Anyone have any recomendations on comanies that are good or companies that I should avoid?

[Mitsukara]

I use SBC Yahoo DSL. It's okay but I get the impression it's not on the faster end of DSLness, nor does it come with any kind of firewall stuff. Basically it sort of strikes me as "okay, here's a fancier/faster dialup cord for ya, and it's got this little box on the outside. Bye"

It certainly seems okay, and I've been fairly safe using it with my Zone Alarm + AVG Free + Spybot Search and Destroy + AdAware SE security setup, I think.

[Monica]

I use BellSouth FastAccess DSL Xtreme 3.0 (only because 6.0 is not availiable in my town, but the moment it gets here, we'll upgrade) and it's fantastic! Very reliable, and no bandwidth restrictions, perfect for everything from gaming to videos to music, and I don't think we actually NEED 6.0 but doubling perfect would be sweet, heh.

[MottZilla]

I use SBC, now known as SBC Yahoo. It's fast and pretty reliable, no monthly bandwidth limits. It's also pretty cheap. Not bad for 50kb/sec upload and 200kb/sec download.

[Mitsukara]

Well, like I said, I have no problems with it; it's always been extremely easy to use. Those were just my impressions based on other people's descriptions of DSL, not really problems for me. *shrugs*

[Cloral]

Checking out the bellsouth website at the moment...
6Mbps is faster than you need. You'll be server-bound on your download speeds 95% of the time, meaning that you likely won't see much of an increase in your end user download speed. 3Mbps is probably more than fast enough for the time being.

Unfortunately, they require you to have a regular telephone account with them as well, and then the price savings vs. cable internet disappears. Overpricing of the cable internet is my primary motivation for the move. Currently I am investigating verizon and att to see what sorts of 'naked dsl' services they offer.

PS: At&t and SBC are the same thing as each other now, right?

[Monica]

Checking out the bellsouth website at the moment...
6Mbps is faster than you need. You'll be server-bound on your download speeds 95% of the time, meaning that you likely won't see much of an increase in your end user download speed. 3Mbps is probably more than fast enough for the time being.

Ah, thanks, now I don't feel so bad about missing it. ^_^ I hear some speeds are up to 8Mbps on cable... Anyway, good luck. :)

[Cloral]

Thanks. :)

I checked at&t and verizon at the same time, and couldn't find the option at at&t for 'naked dsl' (dsl without phone service). Since I was already knee-deep in the verizon site, I just went ahead and signed up for their service. It's $35 for the 3Mbps service, which seems to be the same for all the dsl providers I saw.

Thanks to all who responded.

[erm2003]

If Verizon DSL is available in your area it's a pretty good service as well. My parents and grandparents have just switched to it and the service seems fine. They also have two speeds available and the lower of the two is more than enough for most.

EDIT: Posted at the same time. Looks like you went with Verizon anyway. :)

[MottZilla]

Yes, AT&T and SBC have smashed together again. I don't know what the big deal is about having your phone service through them is. You probably have phone service from someone, I don't see how having them as your local phone service would be that much of a problem. I know for us DSL is much cheaper than cable internet service.

[Cloral]

Actually, I don't have landline phone service. I have a cell phone and that's it. So on the att site they had a part where you had to enter your phone number and there wasn't anything I could put there. So quite simply, by not offering the naked dsl service, they cost themselves a customer.
Cable internet service in my area is $44 a month, so $35 a month is a pretty significant savings ($108 a year). The cable internet service was also laggy, which was a problem playing games on Live. All in all, I'll be glad to be rid of them once the dsl is set up. Now to just switch my tv service away from them as well...

[Monica]

Just felt like mentioning that my dad just told me tonight that he ordered 6.0 and it'll be here next week. Yay! ^_^