On 11 Jul 2001, at 7:49, Phil Mendelsohn wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Bob McCloud wrote:
> 
> > can get. I'm at 22,000 and get a signal of 15db or less sometimes.
> > Technicly its not suppose to work, but I get a constant connection.
> > Only problem is, if something goes wrong, they wont fix it. But,
> > thats the deal I made.
> 
> How'd you negotiate the deal?  What rate do you train at?
> 

This got rather long, so if your not interested, delete now.

Basicly I called the salesmans bluff. At first I went with a 
nationwide company, not sure if they are still around. But, they had 
sdsl. They guarnteed a full meg. That requires a seperate phone 
line. When I ordered the new phone line, Qwest naturally wanted to 
sell me dsl. I told them that I ordered sdsl and got a guarntee. The 
salesman, knowing better I'm sure, did the same, guanteed a full 
meg. I didnt get the full meg, I only got 756K, up and down on the 
sdsl. But, the price including phone line was like a 200 bucks or 
something, the price for my 16 ip address's and dns was 
outrageous, on top of that.

In the meantime, Qwest installed theirs. At the time, 256k was 
advertised, up and down. But we all know the price for that. Much 
cheaper. All of this took about 6 weeks to happen. Well, by that 
time, things had changed and I didnt need the meg or the 756k. I 
had a promise from the sdsl, so I had that disconnected and they 
ate the install price. They also reimbursed my install charges for 
the phone line, which I cancelled.

After awhile, Qwest changed to the 640K down. About 4 months 
later, I'm now 6 or 7 months from the time of install, my connection 
was going up and down daily for a couple of weeks. To the point 
that I almost switch to cable. I need the ip address's to or I would 
have changed. 

I called Qwest and got on a rant, I'm mean I was livid and not nice 
about my connection going up and down. They told me that it 
shouldnt work, I am 22,400 feet out. I asked how that could be, 
when it was installed I was only 18,200 feet out. My house didnt 
move, and I know the CO didnt move. Then I accused them of 
jacking with the phone lines and I wanted it fixed or I go the state 
commmision. At this point, Qwest was in the middle of buying 
USwest and made promises to the state about improving dsl 
services. 

Between me being very rude, on a rant and just short of cussing 
and being 22,000 feet out, the tech wanted to disconnect the 
service. I naturally said bull shit, you messed it up, you fix it!!!  
Thats when they put me on the conference call with the Megabit 
Center. Still not sure if that is the right term. Anyway, they agreed 
to keep the service on, if I would agree never to bother them again. 
Remember, I was not nice during all of this.

And guess what, the service has been excellent. I havent lost a 
connection since. At the time, I just upgraded to CBOS 2.1 or 
something. I trained in at 15db, 640k up and 256k down.

I just checked it, im trained in at 358k down and 256k up at 24db !!

I have a third party webhost, not my ISP. I can ftp to them at 700k. 
But typical download from the net is between 400K to 500k 
depending on who I am downloading from. Basicly, my connection 
and bandwidth is all over the place. But, it is always up. Of course 
that all plays to how intensely my ISP is playing the bandwidth 
game.

When I talked to Sprint, on a three year contract, they are suppling 
the router. Last I looked, ebay had it for 1100. So some savings 
there, how is Bandwidth.com handling that. Are you buying one? 
for how much? and where?