I'm a CT-based Charter Comm customer and I'm considering going with satellite to improve my HD line-up and if I'm lucky, to save a buck or two. I've never been an E* subscriber so I should be eligible for a free Vip722 soon which should be a big upgrade to the SA 8300HD DVR that I currently have.
I was also considering bundling ATT DSL/Phone service to replace the Cable/Vonage solution that I currently have. Then I heard that ATT offered all three but their website is so difficult to get the bottom line of what the total package would cost in the configuration that I want.
I essentially want the E* HD DVR Advantage with second two-room tuner, 3Mb or greater DSL, Flat-Rate unlimited Local and LD Phone and I would like to pay less than $150 for all three. Is this acheivable and is it worth trying to bundle with ATT?
FYI, I don't have access to U-Verse or FIOS in my area.
Any suggestions?
I am a Time Warner customer in Austin, TX... similar to Comcast (they seem to use the same equipment, the SA8300HD).
I switched from TWC Road Runner to AT&T DSL about 9 months ago. I got the Elite level of service which advertises 6 Mb/sec download and 768Kb/sec upload. It costs $34.95/month, and they give you 3 free months of service if you send them a rebate form with your cable bill showing you switched from cable internet. This is cheaper and faster than Road Runner.
Also, AT&T is more reliable and has better customer service, by a significant margin, than TWC.
TWC maintains their cable network mainly to broadcast signal outward. They do not understand how to manage and maintain a two-way interactive network (like Internet access). If there's a problem, it's your responsibility to call them and alert them to the problem, and convince them it's their problem. Then they send out a tech who checks your signal levels, and maybe replaces some cable or a junction in your house, or maybe runs a new cable from the street box to your house. Then they leave. If there's any problem beyond that, they don't fix it, they call it in, and someone sometime by some undetermined method does something, and doesn't tell you what it is.
I've been through this with them. The tech says, "Well, it's something out there in the network. I'm turning it over to the system techs." I say, "OK, how do I track this problem? How do I know when TWC signs off on the solution, so I can test it from this end and report back if it's still not working?" I get a blank stare (or the equivalent over the phone. Then they say something like "It should be fine now."
With AT&T, they actually know how to monitor and manage their network. I've had two problems in the time I had it. The first time, I called it in and a very helpful CSA answered. I described my problem, he said "Hold on a minute, let me check the status", and came back in about 90 seconds and said, "OK try it now". It was fixed! I said, "What happened?" and he said, "It was just a provisioning problem, I fixed it." I thought, "Wow ... the first level CSA you call actually has the ability to go into the network, check status, and fix things!
The second time, I had an outage, and I called it in. They said, "Yeah, we already know, it'll be fixed soon." And it was (within minutes). I've had maybe one other outage since then but I don't even bother calling because I know they manage their network and pay attention to outage alerts.
Plus, their network is a much cleaner IP pipe. They don't really drop packets much at all. The speeds are consistent, there's no slowdowns like there can be with the shared-medium cable network.
One caveat: make sure you are within the prescribed distance from their network switch to get the level of service you want. This is quite important. Their loops just dont work beyond the distance specified. They are about to improve this greatly with VDSL (this year) and VDSL2 (next year) but for now you have to live with it. The Uverse rollout helps here because they are putting DSL boxes everywhere in neighborhoods to execute their Fiber-To-The-Node strategy.
All this said, if you could get FIOS, you probably should. Hard to beat the bandwidth of fiber to the home.
AT&T will be selling naked DSL without POTS later this year. For now, you have to sign up for a POTS line. AT&T also has CallVantage VoIP, which I also recommend as long as you are using AT&T DSL and not a cable modem. My CallVantage never worked well with TWC Road Runner. Once I switched to AT&T DSL, it's been rock solid. It's only like $25/month for unlimited calling and all the features.
