I was supposed to be enjoying my Verizon DSL hookup on Tuesday. No go. Called tech support and after 30 minutes, they try to bitch to me about my hookup (100 foot of R-11 to my modem). As I know from my DSL Heaven thread, I know that was BS. I responed that it does not matter if I am 5 feet or 50 feet from the jack, I got no DSL signal on my modem. They then discovered, oh, there is no signal after all.
Tonight, I received an e-mail from Verizon stating that my DSL hookup will be activated on November 4, almost two months after I requested it. This is the third attempt at DSL hookup. This time they did not tell me what i sth holdup. Unbelievable, un-freaking-lievable. This is one reason why it is a bad, bad idea to leave the Internet connections to the bad-servicing phone companies.
[John Cusak]
DUDE! YOU MUST CHILL!!!
[/John Cusak]
Seriously, everyone knows that DSL installation is not a process that even shows remote signs of being figured out. Nobody knows what they’re doing yet, and it’s sad. Well, thery’re starting to get it figured out, but have a long long way to go.
The reason they didn’t tell you what the hold up was? One of two:
The tech didn’t know.
The tech didn’t want to be yelled at for something that the tech can’t fix, nor has any direct control over.
Those are the primary “I dunno” generators that I have seen.
Additionally, the local telco is going to have their hands in there somehow. The copper is theirs. They don’t want the data CLECs to have the business. It is not in their best business interest to facilitate the installation of a loss leader. Mox nix through whom you place your DSL order, the RBOC is gonna stick it in your backside if they can find any way to do it at all.
Plus, Two Months? Jesus, that’s practically lightspeed. I’ve seen installs take 9. Yes, 9 months. If yours goes any faster, you might go backward in time.
If you’d like, feel free to e-mail me. I can probably give you the truth to the evasive answers you might get. I knows the business, chief.
I’ve been in DSHell… not pretty, and I don’t ever, ever want to go back.
But, when you come out on the other side… it’s all worth it. I mean all of it: the 4 hour hold-times, the leaving work early three days in a row to get home to meet the installer who said he was on his way, the midnight sacrifices to Zefnew, the Evil Oracle of DSLAMS and CLECS… all of it.
Because, my friend, broadband is the way God meant the internet to be.
Keep the faith, my friend.
Keep the faith.
:::sdimbert slowly moves back out of the light, leaving capacitor alone in contemplative silence:::
FWIW, after two months of aggravation and multiple visits from Covad techs, my DSL is working and stable. ::knocks on wood:: I must say, Speakeasy (my ISP) has the best, friendliest, and hardest working tech support staff I ever dealt with. Good luck capacitor.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am apparently the only person on earth who has actually obtained Verizon DSL service on the day promised and without some sort of massive cock-up on installation.
Well, of course my activation date happened to be two days before the strike, the wrong modem was sent with my original order, and the one day that a thunderstorm brought down the service, tech “support” for some reason thought I should reinstall all my DSL software…
Nevertheless, I have joined the dark side and am not going back. Capacitor, once you actually get the damn thing, I bet you will too.
DSL… ISP Earthlink via GTE (prior to Verizon) in Plano, TX.
Install was on time, and prompt.
Service rather good since, but an occassional snafu, where something in the CO go ‘pop’ and I have to call Earthlink, to start a GTE… errr… Verizon trouble call.
Thinking of going to Sprint ION, to get away from Verzion.
Used to work for Alcatel, and have some horror stories on DLAM installs in SBC and BA.
Actually, I’m on Verizon DSL as of earlier this month and I love the damn thing for the most part. About a week into it I had some problems logging on, but the “broadband people” fixed it apparently. Now its mostly fine.
I still have the occasional problem of being disconnected in the middle of an intense Team Fortess Classic online battle or right when Diablo’s about to meet the business end of my flamberge. I’d chalk it up something like “net congestion” but I was bumped off of online games maybe five or six times in the half a year I used a 56k dialup to AOL. That’s right. AOL. Meanwhile Verizon bumps me from online games at least once a day. I have to reboot and everything.
The good news is my ping is nice and low. Which doesn’t help the fact that I don’t ingest nearly enough crystal meth to actually be any good at a Quake 3 Deathmatch.
Verizon is not a clec it is a lec. And they send out self install kits so a tech doesnt have to go out to the residence so why would a tech be saying he doesnt know whats up, if he's not there to begin with?
You didn’t read me completely. Either that, or you’re reading something else into the mix. I intend to reply to this in a non-inflammatory fashion, however.
Verizon is a LEC, ILEC, RBOC, whatever you want to call it, they’re the people who own the copper. I know full and well that they are not the CLEC. I deal with Verizon regularly. The CLECs are the COMPETITIVE local exchange carriers, the people who are troubled with getting the copper from the telco. At any rate, the only reason that CLEC came into the discussion at all was to illustrate the fact that a possibility that Verizon is not installing as fast as they could be may be that they do not want the telco to get the business. They receive more profit by getting the end-user to purchase their own DSL, or even better, an ISDN or T-1 service.
As for your second point, I did not specify an installation tech. Frankly, the term technician is typically VERY loosely applied to most people in that role. In any case, I made the assumption that the technicians capacitor was dealing with were NOT there, especially since he said:
The fact that his communication with the technicians was over e-mail lends heavily to the suspicion that they were not, in fact, onsite.
Don’t forget to tip your server. They run better downhill.
When I called my cable company and asked for Roadrunner they wanted to come install it that day, but I was busy. They came on the day I told them to come and the whole installation took about an hour including drilling holes in walls. The actual getting online part took under 5 minutes.
Wow, I ordered my DSL service online on a Wednesday. The web page stated I was within substation range. I called into USWest Thursday and had them test my line. I received my Intel Pro DSL modem the following Monday. I installed it that night, called into USWest and they gave me my IP,subnet, gateway, DNS, and incoming/outgoing SMTP and I was hooked up. At the time I was setup with just 256 up/down, but recently they increased my speed up to 640 up/down for no additional charge.
The only problems I had were with reg. editing my connection speed. I previously had a 56k modem and the registry was still locked to 56k max, even after I installed the new modem. If you do have any problems like this - I would suggest downloading – EasyMTU or Intelli-Dial-Up, found at === http://www.tweakfiles.com/networking/
They can even be used if your are not having probelms to increase up/down-loads.
