Fairly long email, going to only include the parts I'm replying to in order to keep the size more manageable.
> Can't get a link to just images search on google with a bunch of other > garbage. Use this link and click on images. You can see ~5k speeds > degrade heavily. Its been a known fact for a quite some time. > http://www.google.com/search?q=adsl%20distance I'm well aware of distance limitations. What I was trying to convey was that distance in and of itself isn't the issue, the issue is distance causes attenuation issues. If your attenuation is fine, regardless of distance, you should be able to get a solid connection, Having said that, if there's too much distance, your attenuation wont be fine. > Back in 2003, we had At&t engineers doing distances checks, and they > never came back with any consistent results. I was 7k at best, and at > worse 11k. Never any consistency. This touches on what I forgot to mention when speaking of distance. I have not gone out and measured anyone with a measuring tape or anything like that so it's highly probable that the tools we use for measuring distance aren't accurate since I haven't personally verified them. I will say though, I worked on an escalation where a customer was remediated to a slower speed due to 'distance limitations'. She was highly upset because she got perfect 3meg speeds before and couldn't understand how her line could have gotten "longer" overnight. Upon further investigation, the customer had some inside wiring issues. Once she was forcefully upgraded to 3mbit again and a technician rectified the line issues, she could have easily gotten 6 meg service with her line parameters. This was a customer we insisted could only get 768kbit due to distance. Something to think about. > That might be the common case, but I assure you I had escalated the > matter to At&t Engineers, not any level 1, 2 or 3 techs. It kept getting > escalated till it got to the network engineers. I don't mess around with > such things, given my past experience. I work executive (presidential) escalations. Not to toot my own horn or something, but there's nothing higher. We do work with the engineering department, but the information I'm giving here is a direct result of working with these other inner departments which has taught me what I know. > Distance still plays a much bigger factor. I am not that far from my CO. > I know where it is, I see it all the time on St. Augustine Rd. But I > doubt I take a direct path from my location to the CO. I have had many > types of connections at my location here in Jacksonville, ADSL, SDSL, > T1, Comcast Cable, and now U-Verse. You should see how many pairs I have > coming to my location. The U-Verse guys were loving it. I have a green > tower in my front yard that was put in when the T1 was ordered. At one > point Nuvox switched DSLAMs to Calix DSLAMs and I had 2 T1s. In addition > to phone lines, when I still had pots lines. Like I said earlier, distance is an issue sure, but many times is misdiagnosed. Believe me when I say, many people even in the engineering departments aren't all on the same level of expertise. It's an unfortunate reality, but I say this only because I feel it's important people become more educated about issues. > Also tried to use Clear Wire way back in the day, when I first met Dave > Shields of CyberXpress. He was on my roof hanging off the fireplace > trying to get signal. Before they sent out a van with a 90' retractable > antenna, and got even less of a signal than Dave did :) I attempted to explore the clearwire route once, it seemed like the worst of all worlds >_< > Though on Comcast's 20Mbps/4Mbps plan I routinely get ~30Mbps > down, and at times I get a full 3MBps download. Quite common if I suck > files down from my servers or else where. Due to the speed boost > technology, but it does taper off after the first few hundred megs are > transferred. In my experience it tapered off much quicker than that, however, I probably had a much crappier plan than you (aka cheapest available, but not the 1mbit/1mbit economy plan) > I can't recall what the other specs where of my line at the time back in > 2003. I just know that it always came back to distance. Everything else > was good, I was just to far to get faster speeds. They will tell you it's distance, but only because we're not allowed to use technical jargon. The real problem was attenuation, which was being caused by distance. Same thing, sure but I feel it's important to address the root of the issue > Well I know people in distant areas that have Cable service, and could > not get DSL. CO is miles away. Though for one, Comcast plopped a node in > their front yard. Some what far out in in the country in St Johns > county. In my experience, the contrary is normally true. There are instances where cable is available and dsl isn't, but it's not as common as DSL being available and cable not being. This is only based on personal experience, but was true for any ISP. When I lived in rural kentucky, my friends who could actually get cable considered themselves lucky. I also speak with numerous customers who threaten they will switch as soon as they can get some other provider in their area. I realize that's no indication though, as I do not handle cable customers in order to see both sides of the fence. Perhaps this is more common up north in the KY/TN area that I'm from. > Thats just bonded 56K basically, two pots phone lines. First started > with ISDN with clients in California that could not get DSL. They never > got DSL, distance issues, they ended up going wireless. With a company > providing wireless to police, fire, and other government entities. > Really good speeds, and was repeater based. If A can't reach C, but can > reach B, then C can relay through B to get to A, and vice versa. Every > time they serviced someone far away, they could reach others father > away. It was really cool, but forgot the name of the provider long > ago :( I realize what ISDN is, however, this doesn't change the fact that the government regulations were a deciding factor when deploying DSL service to areas. The only reason I even know about this is because my manager used to be a sales manager. Not typical for employees to be aware of this. > DSL is not regulated any more than any other form of Internet service. > Internet is not considered a utility for some reason. Though it very > much is these days, along with power. Many don't even have pots phone > lines anymore, even though the old POTS phone system is still > regulated.... DSL with POTS is regulated. DSL direct is not regulated. They operate both as if they were both regulated to avoid confusion and complication between the 2 services. > It seems per reading current day news article the merger is still under > congressional/senate review, and has not been approved as of this time. > Thus it may or may not happen. Hopefully it won't but I have no > influence there, short of writing my congress person or senator. I see, I know the dollar offer was accepted. Since the offer was agreed upon by both parties I dont see why it would be refused. As has happened every other time AT&T purchased other companies, I expect there to be stipulations placed on the acquisition, but would doubt they will straight up say no you can't. They haven't yet, and AT&T has purchased quite a few companies, some major players as well like Cingular and Bellsouth. Not saying I support it, I also agree competition is a good thing. > Whats to say they keep their HQ here in the US? I always wondered that > about like MS, if the government really went after MS or any company. > They could just relocate to another country :) That's true, maybe additional rules should be placed on it haha. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of government dictating our every move, but competition in free commerce is worth defending IMHO. Outsourcing is destructive to our economy and the bottom line is companies are forced to do it to stay competitively priced when everyone else is doing it too. Kinda like child labor in foreign countries, it's wrong, but profitable. > Only because they are not doing fiber to the premises. But it most > certainly has a cost, since they are running fiber from the CO to the > U-Verse nodes. Very much like Comcasts network, but Comcast is years > ahead. Verizon just took it once step further, running fiber into > neighborhoods terminated at customer premises. Not surprising they > ceased that and never even started in cities the size of Jacksonville :) Had they been our local provider I suspect they would have. Their deployment was typically in metropolitan areas (unless you mean geographically large). FIOS is in Philadelphia, and Tampa. These aren't small cities by any measure. > Again thats not entirely what the U-Verse techs informed me of, its just > a transitional phase. Before wireless speeds are on par and then it will > be a switch to At&t. One regular At&t tech was telling me how they were > not treated as good as U-Verse techs. How At&t didnt' even care much for > the old BellSouth/SBC. Given that it wants to be more of a wireless > company than wired. Again this is not my opinion, its what more than one > At&t and U-Verse tech said during preparation, and install. You'll hear many opinions that wildly vary in AT&T, most uninformed. I make an intentional effort to base what I say on fact, or at least advise my source of information when I'm unsure of the reliability. I wouldn't disagree they are pushing wireless, it's only the time frame I'm concerned about. Why would AT&T be investing in this wired U-Verse network if only to replace it as soon as they finish their investment? AT&T does a lot of unusual and unpredictable things, but wasting money is not something they are in the business of. > Depends on where you are within At&t :) > >> so as much internal/private information as I've >> collected (some I shouldn't even know), I'm sure there's a lot more >> plans than I'm aware of. I still think there's some value to being on >> the inside though, dealing with a company every day and seeing how it >> works helps you to be able to predict what that company might decide >> to do. > > Yes and know, unless your privy to whats coming down the pipeline. It > seems At&t is keeping things pretty separate and isolated. The on At&t > tech was complaining about how much better the U-Verse techs are treated > compared to others.... It was pretty funny :) Perception is everything indeed. With all due respect, I get a much more rounded understanding of the company than some techs who only talk to their buddies and supervisor the few hours they're actually in the office. In the position I'm in, I have the opportunity to speak with many other departments and know things most employees on the front line aren't privy to. Being a part of process, I also know things management within my center may not know about. AT&T is very good at giving information on a need to know basis only, so many rumors are spread. I can guarantee you my sources of information are much more reliable than the tech you spoke with you. I only get this exposure due to the position I have with process. I'm not even able to speak at liberty with my co-workers about what I know/do. It's my trustworthiness that's caused me to be trusted with the information. This is why I've been careful not to give too many details, but think I've stayed clear of providing information that is sensitive and proprietary. I don't think I'm necessarily in disagreement with you though, just slightly different. I do agree wireless is the direction they're pushing, but they aren't pushing that direction with intentions of soon abandoning U-Verse in my (somewhat educated) opinion. Abandoning DSL on the other hand? Yep, no questions there. It's my hope they will continue to do what they've always done and support existing accounts without taking drastic measures to eliminate DSL all together. If not, I'll be soon looking for a new job. This is probably what I know least about to be completely honest, because I KNOW that if they were intending to eliminate their DSL department, they would very heavily protect their agents and even high level management from knowing this because the recipients of this information would be in fear of their jobs. They have sometimes repurposed/retrained agents when things such as that happened in the past though, so hopefully if it did happen I'd keep my job. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml Unsubscribe [email protected]
