Internet Issues (Round 2)
Well after getting my Internet connection up on Tuesday for a few hours it went down again in the afternoon .. After another phone call, a visit to the AT&T store to pick up a “supported” modem and yet another phone call, I finally got moved to the right group of people to fix the problem.
For some reason my properly provisioned line became improperly provisioned. A flip of a switch by the last guy I talked to and voila .. Success.
AT&T wanted to charge me $99 to talk to a specialist on how to configure my “unsupported” modem. Guess what, the problem was on their end which is what I was saying the whole time. I’ve actually been around this block a few times, but when I said the dirty word of unsupported modem the folks on the front line simply assumed that I was wrong so I needed to go spend an arm and a leg to solve a problem that didn’t exist.
I solved that problem alright, I went to the AT&T store, picked up a $100 2-wire modem that is supported and a nice little rebate form for $100 .. Yup, you heard it right, Once I had the right modem @ my house they were more than happy to send me off to the right group to solve the problem.
Oh, and for the record, that brandy spanking new 2-wire modem that is supported .. It didn’t work either, go figure.
In the end, I’m up now $30/month cheaper than my month-to-month with DSLExtreme. But more importantly, I’m ready to switch to Uverse when it comes available and youbetcha .. I’m gonna take advantage of their “free” gateway for Uverse. This $100 DSL modem that they just sold me is going to be a complete waste on their part.
After reading the woes of dealing with a AT&T CSR who is more than likely located across the Atlantic AND who are clueless, I have had the same issues. It took me over 5 years to get my noisy line fixed. It was intermittent and only got noisy after a rain when the sun came out or the weather was warm and trying to convince the $^*&%^s in India that it was a LINE problem does tend to raise your blood pressure.
A tech did come out and removed 700 feet of bridge tap and I thought it was actually fixed, no such luck. FastForward to a few months ago and I think I had the same failure as you did but I can also use dial as a backup which did work. (I would suggest setting up a dial up since I use that modem for mainly for faxing now) My DSL speed is down now but the line is quite and the DSL modem stays locked up.
Am also thinking of U-verse BUT if the DSL service is so flaky how would U-verse perform over the same facilities?? It kinda scares me…