AT&T Direct (i.e., dry line DSL) in Austin (Howe: apartment, credit)

[AustinExPat]

Does anyone out there have any experience ordering and using AT&T's DSL Direct in Austin with a residential account? It's a DSL-only service; no landline phone and no TV service are included. I would be opening a residential account in downtown Austin.

[verybadgnome]

I used to have TW Roadrunner and a landline and later on I switched to AT&T DSL with landline. I was having technical issues one night and had a rep on the phone and she told me I could have a "dry line" with DSL only. Now that is all I have and pay about $30/month for it. I think there is a phone number associated with the service but of course there is no dial tone/phone service.

One other note is that at first I did not realize that the AT&T-supplied modem/router was a wireless one. What's more and even more surprising is that is was Mac Airport-compatible.

[readymade]

Yeah, the supplied wireless modem is pretty sweet, I agree.

[AustinExPat]

Thanks for the info, verybadgnome and readymade. That's a pleasant surprise about the modem/router being wireless. One less thing to buy.

Does the router's wireless function have encryption and a way to restrict the wireless network to MAC-addresses on a list you supply?

[verybadgnome]

Originally Posted by AustinExPat

Thanks for the info, verybadgnome and readymade. That's a pleasant surprise about the modem/router being wireless. One less thing to buy.

Does the router's wireless function have encryption and a way to restrict the wireless network to MAC-addresses on a list you supply?

I think you had to put in a code from the bottom of the modem into your wireless card setup. The acronym may have been 'WEP' or something close to that.

[readymade]

Yeah, I set up my wireless with WEP encryption. I don't know about the MAC-addresses, though. I don't see why not. It appears to be just like a regular router only also a modem.

[txpacotaco]

This is a very timely question for me. My husband and I had combined (land line and DSL) service through AT&T, plus cell service. A couple of months ago we dropped the land line, so we had dry DSL and cell service.

When I got up this morning our internet service was down; instead, my browser popped up a page from AT&T telling me to contact their Internet Customer Support team.

I called. The person I spoke to said my service had been disconnected in error, and they couldn't figure out why.

I was then put through to someone to reconnect our service. She put me through a series of questions (keep in mind there's a 5 minute process to repeat all your personal information each time you speak to a new person). She was almost done when we were disconnected. She did not call me back.

So I called back. After giving my personal information and repeating the spelling of my name a couple of times, I was told that I had given THIS person an invalid account number. I read it to him again (he'd already read it back to me once), and then again... and he finally found my account. He said my service had been disconnected. Then he asked me what operating system I use (Mac OS X, not that it matters). I asked to speak to a supervisor and he told me he would have to transfer me to OS X tech support. I insisted he put me through to customer service instead. After being put on hold for 10 minutes a message came on the line saying my call could not be transferred, and asking me to hang up and call back.

Total time on the phone thus far: about 40 minutes. On my cell phone.

So I called back. I explained the situation again (after another 5 minutes of repeating all my information) and again asked for a supervisor. I was put on hold and the next person who answered was NOT a supervisor but was, not surprisingly I guess, a tech support person. Gave my personal info again, explained the situation again, was put on hold again. A new person took the call and once again I gave all my info and explained the situation. This person told me they could see that an order to reconnect my service had been placed, and that it would be back up.... in 1 WEEK. I insisted on speaking to a supervisor again, and was again placed on hold.

This time, a new department picked up the call. Gave him all my info and explained the situation once again. This person was on the Maintenance team. I explained the situation again and he informed me that they used an automated system to schedule connections and couldn't change it. I told him to cancel my service. I was placed on hold again.

This time, another person answered the phone. He explained that he could actually see all the calls I'd made and the understood the situation. He reiterated that my account had been canceled in error and put me on hold while he attempted to get our service restored. After several minutes he came back on the line and told me it was too late, and that I would have to wait a week to get new service, and told me there was absolutely nothing he could do to speed that up. I again told him to cancel my service.

He offered to credit our account $5.00 if we would keep our service. I told him I'd spent more than that on cell minutes in the time I'd spent on the phone so far. He offered to give us a month of free service. "Sure, go ahead" I told him.

Total time to get to this point: 2.5 hours.

So I'm now looking for another internet service provider. Not interested in Time Warner since there are connection issues in our neighborhood. Anybody have any ideas?

So my short answer is this: do not use AT&T for dry internet service. Not only will they be unable to assist you in a timely manner (because they use land line phone numbers to look up accounts), but they don't seem to have their act together when it comes to keeping service available, and certainly do not seem to have the processes or authority to assist customers when AT&T is at fault.

[readymade]

AT&T is horrible. But so is Time Warner. So where does that leave you? I've been trying to get AT&T on the phone to cancel Showtime & HBO for about a month now. I just don't have 1/2+ hour to be on hold on the phone. I hang up after 10 minutes. Ugh. Also, sometimes my DVR records shows I ask it to, and sometimes it doesn't. (I know this is about internet, but still)

I had Time Warner for about a week. It was even worse.

[kenneth.richard]

Originally Posted by readymade

AT&T is horrible. But so is Time Warner. So where does that leave you? I've been trying to get AT&T on the phone to cancel Showtime & HBO for about a month now. I just don't have 1/2+ hour to be on hold on the phone. I hang up after 10 minutes. Ugh. Also, sometimes my DVR records shows I ask it to, and sometimes it doesn't. (I know this is about internet, but still)

I had Time Warner for about a week. It was even worse.

I agree, both TW and ATT have horrible customer service. However, I do use TW because you get faster internet overall. If you plan on doing anything more than just surfing the internet (email, news, shopping), then TW is the way to go. I get almost 9Mbs down despite the plan saying 7Mps down.

My neighbor has the basic ATT DSL package (I think it's comparable in pricing to the TW plan I have) and only gets 4Mbs max.

It's nice that ATT does offer a wireless router, but wireless routers are very affordable today. Also, ATT modem/routers cannot be reused if you ever decide to change service in the future.

Speaking of changing service, I forgot to mention that ATT is a 12-month contract (at least it was when I was back in my apartment 1 year ago). TW is not.

But again, customer service is non-existant for both companies. And it sucks that a tiered network will be implied for both companies. So you have pros/cons on both sides.

[txpacotaco]

On a side note: I know I've always heard about what terrible customer service TW has, but I have to say that they went way, way, way above and beyond the call of duty in attempting to help us troubleshoot problems with the internet service we had with them a couple of years ago. We don't know if they're a viable option here now, but we're hoping the physical service has improved (meaning the internet connection) enough in 2 1/2 years to service us. So we're getting it installed on Wednesday.

One other option - though it's more expensive - is Speakeasy. My husband used them for years and years, and they were our service provider the first year we were married, too. They were great, and had FABULOUS customer service, to boot.