Verizon DSL is Dead and I Killed It

Yesterday, I had Time Warner wire my house for cable tv, phone service, and internet access.

I had very good service from Directv and had no particular beef with Verizon for the local phone service I had. But I was unvelievably unhappy with Verizon DSL.

I started service with Verizon DSL about three years ago. I never received an acceptable service from them for any sustained period of time. The service run as fast as 3000 kbits / second download for hours at a time, but the service would often be no faster than 1200 kbits....and there were many slowdown periods when it was only as fast as dialup. My last week, it was usually down completely. The green DSL and Internet lights on my Westell modem would turn red, then go out altogether.

The worst thing was that this supposedly great company either did not care about their technology difficulties, or did not know what the problem was. I called Tech Support ( 800-567-6789 )many dozens of times. I was told that I should turn the modem on and off. That the microfilter from the phone jack must have come loose. That there was something wrong with the computer.

I think that most of these people were well-meaning but untrained people reading from a script. One time, over a year ago, I was told that they were getting a lot of complaints from Brooklyn...that infrastructure construction was causing big delays. Very recently, when the system was barely functional, I got a competent and honest guy who told me that I was not getting a good signal, and that many of his peers were " not that good ".

But thats in the past now. For the past two days, I have had an impeccable 5000 kbits/second signal, incl at peak hours. I've been flipping from site to site while watching a European tv stream in a small window. I so love this.

But I remain clueless as to how a supposedly great company like Verizon could be so completely incompetent in what you would think is one of their core products. I'm just one guy, but I took great pleasure in taking both the DSL and the Phone service from Verizon. I know others who've done the same thing. The cable guy told me ( when asked ) that he was getting many new customers due to grave dissatisfaction with Verizon DSL.

But I am now a happy guy. Never thought you'd here me say this but long live the cable company!!