Finally rid of ATT DSL- forever!

comfortably_numb

Dogs have owners, cats have staff
Original poster
Pub Member / Supporter
Nov 30, 2011
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Kansas City / Las Vegas
My employer has a residential building that still had ATT DSL. We moved our business lines at the office to Comcast Business years ago, but Comcast Business wouldn't service the residential location. So we had no choice but to keep the DSL. Well, the boss recently asked me to upgrade the speed, which required a truck roll. Had appointment for 1-3 PM yesterday; tech was no call/no show. Rescheduled to this morning, 9-11 AM; also no call/no show.

Long story short, we were able to get Comcast to service the address with prepaid internet service. I then had the absolute pleasure of calling ATT and telling them to pound sand.

How that company stays in business, I'll never know.
 
I can't imagine why anyone would suggest (let alone recommend) Starlink in an office situation.
I was going to investigate Starlink for our site’s WAN Backup link as our current 20/20 backup link is around $850/mo and we’re out in the middle of corn (or soy bean) fields, miles from broadband. The other option is LTE, but again, middle of nowhere and so-so cellular speeds. But Starlink is only beta, and I haven’t seen any indication of Business use (other than the EMS use during the fires out west last year.)
 
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I can't imagine why anyone would suggest (let alone recommend) Starlink in an office situation. Further, I can't imagine why anyone would recommend Starlink to anyone who is looking to get hooked up immediately; the waiting list is rather long.
Hey man! I'm just thinking back some years ago in my industry when the only Internet available was dial-up. True business 56k. Wow. No DSL.
Later on the bean counters decided to deal with a second party phone company. Same Bell South lines on the same copper-to-fiber cabinets on the street corner. The Internet speed went down to 22k. And repeated calls resulted in the same thing. Basically the company was "Meeting FCC requirements". The main office was peed off and jumped protocol and had a dedicated Bell South 56k line installed for their admin office. Only.
Years later our branch moved to a building down the street. Level One was stringing fiber and the building was hooked up with 7 lines. Phenomenal speeds.
In the equipment room I found a Nextel cabinet on the wall and a yagi antenna on the roof. The previous occupant/owner had subscribed to their data in a time when copper was the only service in the area. Smart on their part but I can't even fathom the fees.
Okay. So people in my area are so pissed off at the local cable/isp company that they get bilked into Wild Blue, Hughesnet. No DSL for most and those that do have it, have snail service. And we all know how much regular sat. service sucks and the slap in your face bill surprises when you eat up data....etc.
Yeah. There is a lag in getting Starlink right now, I know. Get on the bandwagon. I see the OP was able to finally get Comcast. Cool. But what if they weren't?
Those who have cable, fiber data readily available don't really realize the limitations those who do not have "high speed" data services available. Or even those who depend on things like a Verizon Jetpack for data service.
But. I've been there. It really sucks.
AT&T and others who deliver data services to most but not all should be peed off. Or can deliver but with high pricing and limited capabilities. Peed off in a major way now that there's a new kid on the block.
Promises to make sales. Promises of "soon", "we're planning on it", "it's in the works".....with no tentative date.
Yeah!
 
Hey man! I'm just thinking back some years ago in my industry when the only Internet available was dial-up. True business 56k. Wow. No DSL.
What does this have to do with suggesting Starlink now? Starlink doesn't guarantee anything and most conventional businesses aren't eligible and won't be for a while.

If you go back far enough, 56K was plenty of bandwidth (my workplace navigated the late 1990s using a single 28.8K dialup). Back then, that was fast enough to do just about anything you wanted to use the Internet for while still carrying a remote session or two of our ERP software (text-based). We finally went to sharing a T-1 with our phone system in 2007.
 
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If you go back far enough, 56K was plenty of bandwidth (my workplace navigated the late 1990s using a single 28.8K dialup). Back then, that was fast enough to do just about anything you wanted to use the Internet for while still carrying a remote session or two of our ERP software (text-based). We finally went to sharing a T-1 with our phone system in 2007.
Yup. Way back in the early 90's we were generallty all on dialup from home, and MP3's weren't widespread as yet. Trying to download a 5MB MP3 took what seemed like forever. I knew one guy in Ohio who was on an ISDN line, which was amazing at that time. 128K? Then I went to work at a government agency and we had a T1. Spectacular bandwidth! We had over 9K people on a single T1 and none of us knew the others were even using it. (I guess they weren't.)
 
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Hell when I got my first modem it was 150 baud.
Was that one of those acoustic coupler modems like this?

product-96431.jpg
 

Which Hughes Satellite(s) Does This Point To?

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