> I have a verizon dsl as a secondary broadband connection. It took just
> over 2 months (38 days) from the date it was installed to the date it
> actually worked. Since then its been extremely reliable. If you can deal
> with the setup headaches (9 phone calls in total) then it really is a good
> deal for the price.
Um, 38 days is a little over ONE month, last I looked. :-)
Realize that Verizon was originally two companies. On the West it was GTE,
which had a moderately good but not sterling reputation for providing decent
service (in both meanings of the word). On the east of the country it was
one of the baby bells, I've forgotten which, that had absolutely the worst
reputation for being able to provide either working phones or even excuses
for not fixing them.
For a good long time after the merger and name change not a whole lot really
changed. The west coast still had reasonably decent service, and the east
coast and south still sucked bigtime. It was NOT homogonous across the
country. Most people don't realize this, and as the larger part of the
country had the non-GTE experience, they have problems understanding why
some people will defend Verizon even a little.
I'm in GTE-land. Verizon Wireless service in the suburbia where I live has
ALWAYS been and STILL is vastly superior to any of the other services for
connectivity. ATT in particular is virtually useless. I realize that this
isn't universal across the country. I'm just pointing out that the opposite
isn't universal either! :-)
As far as getting DSL, GTE/Verizon doesn't have a wonderful reputation IF
you try to get the DSL service from the phone company. The general belief
starts out with "you want what?" and then moves to "it must be your fault if
it doesn't work".
Knowing this, I got DSL from Earthlink. It cost less than Verizon was
charging. I got the DSL modem about 10 days ahead of when Earthlink said
I'd get it from Hong Kong or wherever it was sent. They said it would take
2 weeks to get DSL carrier. I plugged the modem in when I got it. There
was carrier, and it worked. Absolutely NO problems. Guess who really
supplied the service? Right: Verizon. With no problems.
About 6 months later Verizon updated their routers and screwed things up so
DSL didn't work. I called Earthlink support (which was still in the US
then) and got someone who actually understood networking. He took about 30
seconds to discover what Verizon had done and sent them a trouble ticket.
DSL was woring again next morning. I suspect I'd still be waiting if I had
had to talk to Verizon tech support, and that was 4 years ago.
Loren
