Review of Pacific Bell - SBCAll reviews of |
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I replaced my landline and DSL with Uverse’s unlimited voice (VOIP) phone service, “Max” high-speed internet (up to 12 Mbps down), and the U200 TV package. Although I could have scheduled the install as early as 5 days from my order date, I chose a Friday morning so my order to live time turned out to be 8 days. The installer showed up 30 mins into the 2 hour window provided by the scheduling tool. He surveyed my condo, and he and I discussed my options. My condo is about 20 years old so it only has Cat 3 wiring to two rooms as well as old coax to the family room and an upstairs bedroom. I have been running a wireless home network so the installer and I agreed that running the Uverse signal to the family room via coax would be the best choice. From there I could hook up my existing wireless router to the Uverse residential gateway (RG). The RG would sit right next to the Uverse DVR providing a signal to the TV in the living room and my wireless phone base station would be relocated from the kitchen to the family room as well. I was happy with this setup as my condo does not allow for easy installation of Cat 5 wires in the walls without significantly ripping up walls which was (and still is) not an option. From start to finish, the installation, account registration, and checkout was complete in under two hours. Because my servicing VRAD is about 300 feet away from my front door, I have a VERY strong signal. My line stats follow: DSL Down Up Current Rate: 25216 kbs 2048 kbs Max Rate: 61880 kbs Not Available Current Connection: Current Noise Margin: 26.5 dB Not Available Current Attenuation: 10.6 dB Not Available Current Output Power: 14.3 dBm -25.4 dBm Service has been exceptional (speed tested at ~11.1 Mbps down and ~1.4 Mbps up), the HD picture quality is better than what Comcast provides, and the features included with the Voice service are appreciated. My wife and I were able to keep our e-mail addresses dating back to the “pacbell.net” days. As a bonus, our order qualified for $250 in rebates. Very pleased so far ... Followup comments:
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I went ahead and ordered it and have only had 2 outages up until last week, when their mail server(s) was acting up and was down for several hours. Of the 2 prior outages, one was my fault the other Pac Bell's, so 2 total outages in 4 years. When I followed the guidelines in the BBR Pacific Bell Forum on how to get my line speed 'upgraded' I called and was surprised to discover that I should have been getting 1536/128 service all along and that my line was always capable of that speed....regardless of what the install tech told me back in 1999. Can I recommend Pacific Bell/SBC DSL for new users? YES! but that yes is qualified with the understanding that you do your homework on DSL technology & service offerings FIRST before dealing with them, otherwise you could get yourself into a situation you might not want to be in otherwise. SBC is not the ISP for the complete n00b or people who need lots of handholding....remember it is what it is, but if you know what you are doing, It can be a very easy process from the time you place the order to the time you go live. UPDATE: 08/2003 I recently had my original PPPoA DSL Modem die a smoking death (I DID have it since 1999), so I went and found a replacement modem on Ebay...turns out it was PPPoE, so I had to get the techs from the Broadbandreports.com Pacbell/SBC forum (Toaster2k) to re-provision my line. I am now getting an even FASTER upload speed (215k) and was taken care of in just a few hours from my initial dealings with the guys in our forums. Pacbell/SBC is still what it is...but these guys are making it better and better ever day!! UPDATE: 06/07/04 Called about a month ago to see what current packages with higher speed tiers were available and was told that I'm still too far away from a CO or RT to get anything faster than my current 1.5/256k service. I asked them how I could get that cheaper since $49.99/mo was expensive for that service. They were able to re-rate me for another 1 year contract all the way down to $26.95/month..! I guess it was an even trade since I couldn't get anything faster for the old price, I got the old service for a new lower price. It's on my bill now and life is good!! Pacbell/SBC is still what it is...but if they are willing to deal like they did with me, that goes a long way toward keeping me a loyal and satisfied customer in the future. UPDATE: 07/18/05 A new year and a new promotion. After waiting a reasonable timeframe to take advantage of the latest and greatest deal that SBC has on Basic DSL, I am now the proud owner of my service for only $14.95 per month! Like I said above, if SBC was willing to deal (they were) it did indeed go a long way toward keeping me happy, because honestly before the $14.95 promotion, I was seriously considering Comcast and their 4.0/384 deal that I could have gotten for a VERY competitive price. UPDATE: 10/25/05 Nothing really new to report except an outage in my CO back in September that had me down for 2 days...Was told it was a temporary 'glitch' but it's odd that only after I complained about my complete loss of signal and sync (though my router showed me otherwise) did they take me seriously enough to look and fix whatever failed at the CO. UPDATE: 05/31/07 Another new year, another plea for help in getting upgraded to something faster then my entry level 1.5down /384up. THIS TIME, things are much different and not in a bad way either! I requested prequal assistance in the AT&T Direct Forum and I was able to after talking to one of the Forum techs there, FINALLY get my speed package increased to 3.0down/512up for $5 month more then I was already paying. I'm on a new month to month agreement & while I was told the upgrade would not happen until 6/4/07, I am already seeing 2.1down and 418up on speedtests so there was ZERO wait time. Am I happy? - Sure am, it's about time someone took me seriously and listened...  UPDATE: 06/23/07 Holding strong at about 2.6-2.7 down and 488-495 up. What's remarkable is that I am getting almost the max rated capacity out of my connection (TCP overhead wont let me get the full speed) with being 18,500' feet from the CO... I was told that I might drop signal and have to be throttled back down because of the extreme distances involved but in the last 24 days since my previous review, all is still good and my signal to noise ratio has actually improved.. A BIG thank you to the Techs in the AT&T Direct forum for doing what the standard Tier I/II AT&T Call Center Techs were afraid to do. UPDATE: 02/01/09 I moved back in October, 08 and the place I moved to was far closer to the CO then my old one was, so I was able to cancel my old DSL/telephone service and re-subscribe to the Elite Tier (a.k.a "Naked DSL") for only $44.95/mo. ! On Speed tests I am averaging 5.1-5.2mbps down and 603kbps up so it's definitely a HUGE improvement! No problem and everything is working well and latency is low so gaming is better then ever! Plus no monthly caps doesn't hurt either!! =) UPDATE: 09/17/09 Actually nothing new to report since my last review except to say that even if I were to ever leave AT&T I'd still get to keep my old legacy @pacbell.net email address....I'd be able to use and access it through att.yahoo.com which is huge as it gives me even more choices then before! Followup comments:
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Would I go with cable to save money if it were available, I would. Just renewed to a new 1 year agreement with a monthly savings of $15 for the entire term. Promo pricing was worth the phone call. No changes to the account were made accept for the billing amount. Update: 02/06/04 Upgraded to 6/384-608 in mid Dec. on 12 mo. contract for $99. Prices drop on Feb.2 and now I get 6016/608 for &45.00. Where else are you gonna get a DSL deal like this? Beats me! Update: 06/08/05 Still solid on 6016/608. Going on 6 years now on my copper CO line in a 60+ year old house. Would I change? Why?? For those who can get it, it's only getting faster and cheaper. Update: 04/03/07 upgraded to Elite- 6016/768 on 04/02. Time to live: 12 hours, WOW! Saving $10.00 a month from previous tier and how can that be bad. Update: 03/08 I don't see myself going anywhere else anytime soon........ Update: 07/09 Still on and still stable. I think Uverse will be available here soon, if not all ready, new VRADs all up and down Pine street, Prolly won't jump though. Call me old fashioned but I still like my line powered land line. Hey!, it's California. Followup comments:
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Canceled the service due to needing faster speeds. I was only able to get Pro service at my location. Service is excellent in my area. I have no complaints other than not being able to receive faster speeds. I would recommend this service to anyone. 4/1/09 I was just setup on the Pro dry loop plan this past Friday and everything is working great. The service is an excellent value. I was able to get the same price as having a phone line because my wife has a cell phone through AT&T and they gave me a bundle discount. I wish I was able to get the Elite plan, but this will do just fine. I know numerous people with this service and have not heard any complaints. I would recommend it to anyone. Followup comments:
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Update to my Review 05/25/09: I still have the Elite - Expert package and its still running very good. its at 6016 - 768 and i get 5118 - 659 in my house thats after the 15% TCP-IP over head. I had an issue with my line about two months ago but they got it all fixed up the very next day. I still recommend Pacbell- AT&T service its been very good to me. Update to Review 12/22/07: Everything has been working good still except a few times their DNS servers came to a crawl. I had a bad box somewhere underground and when I called they came out dug up the concrete and fixed the issue ASAP. After that its been working good again, they even gave me another DSL modem because they were thinking at first it was a bad modem, which it wasn't. So to this day I'm still happy with the DSL service I receive from them. Lately once or twice a month it lags so bad your lucky if you can download at 3.1 kb slower then a freaking modem but your upload stay the same. there has been many threads on this issue and Pacbell hasn't done onething to fix it, and yes I have made threads on this issue as well as others too. Update of Review 04/18/05: I just went through a Line failure on the DSL side only. Toaster and Beachboy helped me out a lot, I thank the both of you for your help. SBC sent out a line tech and he said yes the line was bad, and he setup Maint. job for my line but after the time past it wasn't fixed. I then called Maint. myself and I let them know it wasn't fixed and then they scheduled out two people, a line tech and Maint. person and after they both worked on my line I'm happy to say its all working great. Great work SBC I have had this service for over 5 years now and I have only recommended SBC. Please keep up the great work you have been doing. Thanks Pacbell Followup comments:
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Yesterday afternoon, 4 days after the switch to DSL Direct, out of the blue we lost internet access and got a landing page tell us that there was a problem with our AT&T account and to call Customer Service. I had to go through the new account registration process to re-establish our account. The rep could not offer any explanation as to why this happened 4 days after it should have done and with no warning. I am left shaking my head again as to how clumsy this whole process is. Update: 5/7/09 Have had Pacbell/SBC/AT&T DSL for 7.5 years and I remain very pleased with the reliability and speed. A couple of years ago I replaced the original modem with a Siemens 4100B and perhaps by coincidence, perhaps not I found that I could finally upgrade from Express to either Pro or Elite. I ended up with Elite and get 5.1M down and 650K up on speedtests. The speed is very consistent. To cut a long story short we decided to drop our home phone line and switch to DSL Direct (dry DSL). Cut off was planned for today and DSL was scheduled to be reconnected tomorrow. However, an AT&T technician turned up on our door step this afternoon and apparently had to check the line as though we had never had DSL. When he was done, we were back online, so we were offline for just a few hours. It doesn't seem to be a very efficient process, but it worked far quicker than the horror stories I have heard. The price will still be $35/month as we have AT&T cell phones. Followup comments:
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On 5/17/00 (the day before the installation date) I received a call that my line wasn't qualifying for DSL, and that bridge taps had to be removed. This processs would take 1 week at the most, at which time they would reschedule the installation. I called and asked if I would have to wait another 3 weeks to get a date, and the Pacbell rep assured me that as soon as the line was cleared up, they'd schedule an installation within 3 days. A couple of days later, I received another voice mail that said that they were having problems with the line, and it would push the due date out a few more days. Having not heard anything for a few days, on 6/1/00 I called to check on status. The rep I spoke to said that the line was OK, and scheduled an installation for 6/8/00. Coincidentally, Pacbell also left a message for me that same day saying that the line was ready and installation could be scheduled. On the installation day, I received a call at 7:45AM from the install tech saying that he was on his way. He arrived at about 8:15 and got right to work. Installed a splitter at my demarc, then came inside and installed the Westell modem. Since I already had a NIC installed, he left the Kingston NIC that they provide for me to use if I wanted. He installed the Enternet 300 software (not impressed with that), got my account set up and I was off and running. Whole installation took 1 hour. Even with all the line work, the tech's DSL analyzer showed that the best my line could do was 1280kbps, so Pacbell capped me at 768kbps for stability. Kind of disappointing, but since they only guarantee 384, I really can't complain, and it's been very stable since it was turned up. Overall, I was pleased with the process. I was kept informed of what was going on, they did what they said they were going to do, and the service seems to work just fine. 1/28/03 update: Have had ups and downs over the past 2.5 years, but once a faulty line pair was swapped for another in late 2002, my service has been much more stable. Didn't like the jump to 49.95/month in 2002, but it's still cheaper than a cable modem, especially since AT&T has jacked their prices through the roof. 9/22/07 update: Moved to San Jose in 5/04. I now live very close to an RT, so I was able to upgrade to Elite and have very solid service. No complaints about the service at all. Any glitches have been dealt with by the extremely helpful folks in the AT&T Direct forum - they're the best! 4/30/09 update: Still on Elite; consistently getting over 5Mbps downloads, and over 640kbps uploads. Comcast's super duper high speed offerings are interesting, but not at their prices! Followup comments:
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Pacific Bell - SBC
(13)
San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
$55 per month
about 8 days
AT&T
"Fast connection and cool new features over DSL"
"Missed install date ... what tech support?"
"Pleased with the experience"
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