So. Ca. DSL Quality - AT&T vs. DSL Extreme

[Harvey]

I'm on AT&T, and I have no complaints with the quality, the price or the customer service. I wouldn't hesitate to refer my friend to them, except that he has limited funds, and DSL Extreme has a starting plan for $5/month less.

AT&T Basic intro package:

$19.95/mo.
1.5 Mbps down
128 Kbps up

DSL Extreme intro package:

$14.95/mo
768 Kbps
128 Kbps up

or

$17.95/mo
1.5 Mbps down
128 Kbps up

Rate goes up after one year for both.

My friend will probably be satisfied with 768 Kbps, at least to start, and they don't hassle you if you want to bump the speed for a higher price.

I'm very satisfied with AT&T so before I recommend DSL Extreme, I want to know, how are their reliability and customer support?

TIA.

 

[JackMDS]

The service per-se is probably the same.

When you have few providers in the same area they are all using the same Copper. Actually the core service is provided by the Telco that owns the lines in the geographical area (I.e. Verizon., ATT, S.Bell, and the like).

The differences between the providers in the same area are the billing office, and whatever hardware is given for the client?s home (Modem, Router, etc.).

For regular Internet surfing, and e-mail, there would not be any difference in the user experience

The least expensive service would provide File Download of about 80KB/sec. While the more expensive would provide about 160 KB/sec.

So if your friend is busy all day downloading the more expensive service might be more desirable.

Otherwise, he can take the least expensive service and would not know the difference.

 

[bsobel]

DSLExtreme resells AT&T or Verizon depending on your area.

 

[MadAmos]

I would recommend the ATT version as others have said it is the same service and I would rather have less layers of BS to get wire support and other as well if needed. In my case I compleatly lost my DSL service a few years ago(SBC at the time) and within 24 hours they had a service tech on site that was able to diagnose a line problem and switch me to a good pair. He took the time to test several available pairs and found the lowest noise set as well as eliminating a blind run that he noticed. Since then I have upgraded to elite speed and even though told that I am at the very high end of distance I get 4.5 meg reliably. I don't know how well DSL Extreme service would be with a line problem like this.

Amos

 

[Harvey]

Thanks for the replies. I'm pretty sure the service is the same when things are working well. I'm most concerned about the quality of support since my friend is handicapped. I've found AT&T's support to be very good, and I don't don't have the time to be his first line of tech support.