Review of AT&T (Business Services)All reviews of |
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I have no idea what we are paying for but I know it must be a BIG pipe. Just started with this company and wondered how PHAT the pipe was. Nice surprise. Followup comments:
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I have to praise them on one point: their speed is top-notch and constant across the entire US. I'm now trying to get out of the contract and select another T1 provider with a US-based tech support. I can take sporadic slower speed, but I cannot afford downtime because I use it for business. Even if AT&T refunded me one month service (which I doubt, as they have many exclusions in the SLA, like night hours!), I would not recuperate the $1400 I lost. I would rather pay more monthly, but get real service. I used my own router and set it up myself. AT&T is not responsible beyond the terminal box. That saved some money. 11/07/2007 UPDATE The line has been down two more times in about three weeks. That's a total of four outages in 1.5 months, with an average repair time of almost 9 hours! Their technicians would not service the line after regular business hours, in spite of the 24/7 promised in the contract! What a scam! They told me they have no clue about why their lines keep on going down. I got the OK to terminate the contract without (further!) penalties. I'm now using Verizon WWAN, with 1430/400 pretty constant, thanks to the Kyocera KR1, which doubled the download speed through proper modem programming. I'll add an external antenna and an amplifier, and I should see even higher speeds. I'll be using Sprint's WWAN as a back up. All together, at a fraction of the AT&T's T1 price, and with 100% up time guaranteed by the redundancy, not by an unscrupulous company. Both Verizon and Sprint have a US-based customer service with no wait time. I only called them to activate the modems. No problem with their service so far.. Followup comments:
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that it would be as fast as DSL. But as the service was rolled out and more users were added ATTs service has degraded to no more then 2x dialup. When calls to the support likes result in no answers users are stuck with an expensive non functioning "high speed" network which is no better than allways on dialup. Download speeds on an average are 18KB sometimes spiking to a whopping 32KB. ATT seems to be unwilling to provide a decent level of service to even its business customers who pay 50% more then home users. As a ATT WIMAX business customer i do NOT recommend this service to ANYBODY. Followup comments:
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Technical support failed miserably in setting up my DSL (professional installation ended up being required), many calls were required on two occasions to get them to reset my account, and currently I have been without DSL for two weeks. Tech support has actually given me advice which disabled my local network. I've been trying to tell them that the problem is again a bad connection, but they wouldn't listen til I finally got to Level 2 tech support today. However, he required assistance from another person and we spent 20 minutes on hold before he finally suggested I try calling that other person later. I fully expect to eventually get a professional person out here to tell me that I have a bad DSL connection and that ATT will have to work with Qwest (my local provider) to fix it. In the meantime, it is time to start changing my e-mail address and work towards switching providers. The good part of ATT is that they do provide dial up service from virtually anywhere, provide several e-mail accounts, storage for a website, and it is very easy to access ATT e-mail from within the firewall at work. Cost is a bit higher than that of some other providers, but the value is not bad when it is working. Followup comments:
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- a STABLE bandwidth - expected throughput with a max of 20% -ve delta between published and subscribed upload/download speeds - living up to expectations. In all of these aspects, ATT DSL service sadly fails. I have personally used it for over 6 months but decided to opt out of it and would recommend everyone likewise. The core reasons are - - During subscription phase, request was made to sales-team to confirm if the 3 mbps download bandwidth is sustainable and a confirmation was received as YES. - Next, ATT has a year lock-in period with a USD200.00 cancellation charges - which is very absurd amount in today's competitive environment. Even when moving to areas where ATT service is not available, subscriber still needs to pay these charges, although at the point of subscribing - was told otherwise. - Finally, the core service: (a) During when it is WORKING, at least during those periods the rate is consistent, thus a client-server application like Citrix, etc. works fine. (b) But, the bandwidth can be safely expected to be 50% of what's promised. (c) Technical support will ONLY re-set the modem and nothing else - all the while asking for few minutes, etc. But - no concrete enhancement will be done. (d) What is not stated is that if they feel that ATT service-personnel need to visit the premises to ascertain the root-cause of bandwidth drop - they charge an additional USD200 to do so. (e) Most of the time however, one will find the service completely DISAPPEARING. I have a wireless modem which records each time it attempted logging in to the ATT modem for lost connections - well in a day approx. 10 times it does that. So, although broadband - the service is at best - dial-up slightly faster. (f) Notice one thing - ATT package when it comes with the modem, etc. does not contain any Terms And Conditions document, subscriber is never asked even online to assert anything. Also, there is NO email or web-form based support available. Which means all documents, etc. which you have are ONLY on phone and subsequently no records available. If pestered, they give a POSTAL address for communication to Level-2 support in US but after having sent them 2 mails, I have realized that no answers are to be expected. Consequently, from a legal perspective - subscriber is in a very bad and tight corner. Just to add proof to the pudding, finally after much cajoling with the Tech. support they sent me a mail noting the fact that my service location was beyond the 15000 feet limit set for a 3 mbps connection. Using this mail, I tried to contact support, write back to them but never got any response back. What it essentially means is that from Day-I this range was BEYOND the norm - 15000 feet but they still got me hooked up to 3 mbps speed range. After utter complaints, they asked me to initiate DOWNGRADE - not they, they won't touch the account themselves which would effectively mean they are ack. the problem. All of this speaks very badly on professionalism of ATT and the fact that they are essentially a business establishment with little to no regards to ethics. A subscriber if subscribed is completely at their mercy and wishes - and thus all potential subcribers whould avoid this monopolastic organization - including businesses since ATT clearly has their legal policies very, very vaguely outlined. Followup comments:
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The network is completely unreliable. Our DSL connection is interrupted every few months and it takes anywhere from a few days to a week to get it restored. Right now, we're at 13 days and counting. The problem is NOT with Covad - it's with Ameritech. AT&T contracts their line work to them and their techs seem to constantly mess things up in the CO. It takes them forever to restore service back to where it was before they messed it up in the first place. AT&T tech support answers calls promptly, but can never tell me anything about when the service will be restored or why the technician that was supposed to arrive an hour ago still isn't here. If there was a way to take Ameritech out of the picture, the service would probably be fine. Followup comments:
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AT&T (Business Services)
Charlotte,Mecklenburg,NC
Business customer
Contract price not specified. 
"Almost always wide open"
"Sometimes gets clogged/bogged down"
"PHAT pipes are AWESOME!!"
about 21 days
Verizon
