[Tfug] residential broadband options

[George Cohn]

Wafa Hakim Orman wrote:
> 
> I've now moved to a little place in Texas where my only option is Time
> Warner (AT&T does DSL but won't bundle TV with it, oddly enough). _Now_ I
> know what lousy service is. Slower speeds, a 10-day wait just to get the
> connection set up, & a tech who said he couldn't put in a wire more than 6
> feet long for "liability reasons." Apparently someone somewhere made a Time
> Warner tech run a long wire through their house, tripped over it, & sued
> Time Warner. That's their story & they're sticking to it.

There must be a world of difference between their commercial and 
residential services.

The company I used to work for in Tucson switched to Time Warner Telecom 
about 6 - 8 years ago for both voice and data services.

The difference between their customer service and the local LEC, Qwest, 
was like night and day.

I could call Qwest and they might get back to me in a week or so.  I 
could call Time Warner and they were on it within 15 minutes and would 
work with you until the problem was resolved.

Keep in mind though that this was OC-48 service for the backbone and 
over thirty T1's on that same backbone for voice service.

I would recommend TWT to any local business without any reservations.

I use Qwest for my personal DSL and have 1.5 down, 768 up.  Very few 
problems but their customer service is a little on the difficult side.

As for the 6 foot cable, remember, we live in a world of lawyers and you 
can sue for almost anything.  The telcos stopped running wire and 
installing equipment for several years due to liability issues.

One incident that I know of, an installer mounted a phone on the wall in 
a kitchen.  About 6 months later, that wall collapsed because he had 
drilled through a plastic sewer pipe and the wall filled up with... 
well you figure it out.

I had a co-worker drill through a plastic water pipe in a wall while 
installing a phone at a hospital here in Tucson.

George Cohn