Welcome Back Rosenthal

(Feel free to read this piece, but new info: as of Oct 2008 you can get ATT DSL for 14.95 again and in certain areas 10.00 a MONTH for people who have never had the service). I mentioned that I was getting rid of my ATT phone line based DSL service that involved having a telephone number in favor of their NEW phone-line-free service called Dry Loop (remember, it’s not really advertised anywhere). Today I got it so I want to tell you a few things to watch out for and what to keep an eye out for. The first thing is to try to get all the steps taken care of at once.

When I called the DSL department I could tell in 30 seconds my customer representative was going to have problems since she barely understood what I was talking about, and wasn’t sure of prices or how it would be installed. I offered to hang up and call back but she REALLY wanted “to do her job” so I agreed with the full knowledge that I’d calling back to fix whatever mistakes were about to be put in place. See what needs to happen (if you have a phone line from ATT and DSL service already) is that line has to be cut off 24 hours in advance of the new DSL only service being turned on. You’re starting from scratch actually because they took my Social Security number to run a credit report. And I hate frivolous credit report checks because they lower your score .

So what you want to do is talk to one competent person that can do all the steps at once. Because the way I was originally setup, I was told the service would start on the 24 and I would have to call at least 24 hours in advance to turn off my current phone service and DSL. A couple of days later I looked at a calendar and saw the 23^rd was a Sunday, and there was no way that was going to happen. That meant I had to change the turn on date for the 25^th or before the weekend altogether. If you have phone service and you’ve decided you don’t want it from ATT anymore-and you’re going to go with one of the good choices like Vonage or MagicJack then you’ll need to:

* Disconnect the current line

* Disconnect the current DSL

* Start the new Dry Loop

So when I DID call back I got all that packaged up as one thing so I didn’t need to call the day before and all that.

OK, Today is the 25 and my internet and phone went off yesterday around 10AM. And that’s one miserable day without internet radio. I can live without the email, or even the blog checking but the music is my thing man! Anyway. Get this call today around 11AM from a ATT tech telling me he’s here. And I’m like what, “this wasn’t supposed to be a home visit, I’m glad I’m here.” So verify when you set this up for yourself. Now, I should mention that around 10AM this morning the internet went on and when I checked the modem login page 192.168.0.1 I could see 384kb up and down, so I resigned myself to having to call and go through all the stuff I mentioned in my series about getting this service set up in the first place. But I couldn’t log in.

I expected I would have to go through the whole process of getting my 1.5mb, but since the guy was there I was like, cool, let’s take care of it now. So he did some stuff and I went back in and saw I still couldn’t log in and therefore get online but I could see my speed was now 768kb download. I went back out and the tech guy said he didn’t think my line could take the full 1.5mb. And I said, well why would they sell it to me. The whole point of asking my address when I signed up was to see my distance from the office. By the way; with cable your speed is determined by how many people are on the network connection you’re sharing, and with DSL your speed is determined by your distance from the originating signal . So he said at 768 my failure rate was 30% and I said well, just turn me up to 1.5 and tell me what you see. He saw a 80% failure rate, and so just like I told the last guy, I said turn me up. If it fails I’ll call and have it turned down.

Went back inside called the office, they said I could use the same login, but it hadn’t yet registered me and by 8pm I would be able to get online, but it should actually happen in maybe an hour. Around 2 hours later, still no connection. So I called back. This guy gave me the login and password of ATT and I got in and connected, and registered online. I had tried the registration CD they give out, but it didn’t work. Probably because it uses you phone number for the process, and when you get this Naked DSL package you no longer have a phone number but they give you a 10 digit account number that emulates a phone number . So I got registered online, had to restart my browser and the modem a few times and FINALLY TODAY I’M BACK ONLINE.

And do yourself a favor and get the cheapest broadband deal out there. Get DSL ONLY withOUT the phone line from ATT. Folks the price right now is CRAZY, all you need to get MagicJack working a a fast connection.

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