DSL Variations

This page discusses the experiences (positive and otherwise) some customers have had with DSL service.

DSL Customer Experience

The experiences customers have had with DSL service to date have been... uneven to say the least. Some customers have very positive things to say. Speakeasy.net, for example, posts testimonials from customers on their corporate site [1]:

"My experience with your technical support team has been wonderful"
(Mark C. Brown, Germantown, MD)

"You guys have responded promptly to my email inquiries and you really make me feel as if you care."
(Gregory Almedia)

Other customers have less flattering comments. One of the most famous articles on this subject appeared in the New York Times. Titled "Night of the Living D.S.L.: Broadband Horror Stories" [2] (free registration required), author Katie Hafner tells the tale of a series of frustrated DSL customers:

"...the real nightmare of DSL began after the installation."

"It won't surprise me if I turn on my computer and it [DSL] doesn't work again"

"It's nice to have technicians come to the house -- until it begins to look as though they may never leave."

"When I canceled, they did not ask me for my reasons for canceling... . I do not think they care."

As providers go, Bell Atlantic in particular has endured a significant amount of criticism. Larry Dignan of Ziff-Davis Interactive Investor relates his personal experience with the company:

"The software didn't work. An allegedly easy-to-install green disk was supposed to get me running. Instead, it screwed up my old Internet service provider settings and Bell Atlantic's software couldn't be uninstalled. They told me to install a "nuke it" program." [3]

Tom Spring from PC World came to a similar conclusion:

"I suffered through two months of glitches, spent days waiting on hold for polite but clueless technicians, and finally was struck by a total wipeout of regular phone service. ... As it turns out, installing DSL service using Bell Atlantic's HomeConnect kit actually cost me more money than having Bell Atlantic technicians set it up for me."

An entire Web site -- phoneproblems.com -- has been set up to, for the most part, collect and report "horror stories" about Bell Atlantic and their DSL offering. Another site -- dslreports.com -- collects customer ratings on DSL service providers and uses a sophisticated scoring system to rank them on their "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" pages.

To be fair to the providers, the mass deployment of DSL service currently underway in the United States involves several thorny technical issues . Even after initial deployment, intermittent outages have been a fact of life for many providers [6]. In the long run, competition from cable modem and alternate high-speed technologies should work in favor of the consumer, and the highest-quality high-speed networking services will ultimately be the ones that survive.

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