Simple phone and internet companies

[Sagewoman]

I've been having problems with my AT&T internet service. It's a DSL line attached to my landline account. It's outrageous for what I get, but I don't want the U-Verse packages with included TV. Since I don't watch tv that means I'm subsidizing others who do. I need to have decent internet for work and I like having a landline. Trouble is the current service seems to be getting unreliable, it just goes out sometimes. They keep trying to push the UVerse packages. I talked to them today about the problems and they did that again. They lie about everything to get you to sign up, it seems. The latest story is that they are phasing out DSL in about a year. Who knows if that's true or not. So, I'm shopping for another company.

What I'd like is cheaper phone service and cheaper internet service. No extra frills. My long distance company Pioneer Telephone will be offering phone service for $10-15 month. It's voip, but they are not offering internet service. I actually like Pioneer pretty well. Does anyone know of a good internet company (ISP) that won't try to load on extras (like AT&T wants to). Mainly I want something stable, reliable, and fast enough to do work from home periodically. DSL if possible. I'd love to save money, too.

[SteveinMN]

Sagewoman, to some degree your choices will depend on where you live. Your best bet might be to look in your phone book or do a Web search for Internet service providers local to your area (that is, not the big regional or national players). You'll do better if you're in or near a major population center. If you're willing to go VOIP for the landline, you may have some more options, including something like Magic Jack or its competitors (full disclosure; I have no experience with MJ or any of them). Then your telco is whoever provides your telecommunications access.

The trouble is that very few companies own the pipes over which the Internet works. I can think of a couple of ISPs here in the Twin Cities which I would recommend to someone like you who happened to be living here. But neither of them will lay wire to your house; you'd still have to deal with Xfinity or CenturyLink (or the local phone company) to get to them.

Can you tell us whereabouts you live? That might help.

[Sagewoman]

Sagewoman, to some degree your choices will depend on where you live. Your best bet might be to look in your phone book or do a Web search for Internet service providers local to your area (that is, not the big regional or national players). You'll do better if you're in or near a major population center. If you're willing to go VOIP for the landline, you may have some more options, including something like Magic Jack or its competitors (full disclosure; I have no experience with MJ or any of them). Then your telco is whoever provides your telecommunications access.

The trouble is that very few companies own the pipes over which the Internet works. I can think of a couple of ISPs here in the Twin Cities which I would recommend to someone like you who happened to be living here. But neither of them will lay wire to your house; you'd still have to deal with Xfinity or CenturyLink (or the local phone company) to get to them.

Can you tell us whereabouts you live? That might help.
Thanks, Steve. I did a bit more research and you are right. The phone company has to provide my landline phone service and the prices have more than doubled. The tech support guy said they were doing away with landlines in about a year and going to voip/fiber optics. He lied about several things so not sure if this is accurate. After I posted, I found some independent ISP's and the best looking one put me on hold for a while and then went to "leave a message" mode. Obviously not a good sign when the sales end of things does this, what will tech support be like?

I live in the Detroit Metro area, so there are some, but they are all about the same cost or more than my current service. They look cheaper but then charge for the modem and installation. I guess I'll just stay put for a while. I have time until they change over to fiber optics if that's what they are doing. I'll also ask any techie neighbors. It's still in the investigation stage. It's disappointing that it has turned into such a sleazy business, plus they want a contract at least most of the time. The owners of the pipes have the upper hand obviously.

Thanks again. I will investigate better cell service and a hotspot next. That might be the way to go, especially if voip is the only option in the future.

[pinkytoe]

We are still with AT&T but not U-Verse - internet only which is now up to $60 a month for average speed. It was quite a feat to get internet only so staying put with it until we don't have to. After the nightmare my FIL went through to switch from AT&T to Time Warner recently, we're not even going to try. Might go with Google when we do have to change since we will have that option. Expensive though...

[Sagewoman]

I visited family for Thanksgiving. Last time I stayed with them, there were no problems connecting to the internet. Now they've gone to cable and the connectivity was quite spotty. Also problems with the installation, they wanted to string wires in various places that would be visible. Pinkytoe, I've come to the same conclusion after asking the question and doing some research. I'll just stay with AT&T DSL for as long as possible. Things have gotten worse, it seems to me, not to mention more expensive. Perhaps some other solution will arise if people are dissatisfied. Thanks for the discussion.

[Williamsmith]

The current status of Internet and phone service in the U.S. is due to racketeering within the industry and lack of any regulation. The worst example of free market capitalism has to offer. I find it humorous that the same politicians that argue for restricting big government for businesses also advocate for big government military expansion. You can't get a reliable simple ISP service for a decent price because the people running the country don't care to release you from your financial burdens without putting you back to 1950.

[ToomuchStuff]

They are regulated, but they are a regulated monopoly in a weird way. Why companies of what used to be different sorts, all sell "communications and information" services/products, they don't allow like type companies, to sell in the same area's. (two not linked or independenct cable companies, or in my case)
But the pendulum always swings. I remember when I was a kid, and for cable tv (if you had it), each tv required a box. I remember a meeting at a friends restaurant, where the big boys were in town and they had loads of meetings/training sessions, and they seemed pretty happy that boxes were coming back, while myself was feeling the screws turning. Shortly after was the encryption of all signal thing.

Today I got to deal with a bit of that. For the first time I didn't get my bill mailed in, long enough so it would reach them before the due date (instead of a day or two after). I ran out of stamps and then life happened, no big deal. I went to the pay here, get all device, etc. here and tried to check in and their tablet had no keyboard and didn't seem to like me or the woman after me. When the gal came out to see what was wrong with it she said "oh we don't take payment here at the counters anymore, we do that at the red box". I looked around and saw no red box. I was informed that it was behind a wall, with no signs pointing to it, and the check in box had a check in for paying.
So I paid and decided to see if what they didn't want to sell me years ago, was available more easily now. (internet service, without tv, which isn't hooked up) They used to offer it, for $1 more then having it and not having it hooked up, like I do.:confused:
I got my turn at a person, and asked them what would my service be if I didn't have tv. She told me $21 less and I said, that is it, then OK. Then she proceeded after that to tell me that the service I have is not an option, since I wasn't in a bundle and we would have to go with x service (more money) or she had y service with a two year contract, to which I replied hell no, can you just give me a price list since you couldn't answer my question correctly. (telling me the service wasn't available should have been in the answer) She kept saying they didn't have price lists and the promotions online differ from the promotions in the store, then lie, lie lie to which I started using colorful language in a very calm voice which said I wasn't intimidated. Her boss came out to deal with some problem person and stopped by to ask me to lower my language (never heard that one), and I said do you have a price list, is all I am trying to get and she wandered off and the girl finally went and got one.
Promotions from them, are really just a way to make their regular customers feel screwed for paying their bills on time, etc. rather then getting new subscribers with a high turnover. I think I may write a letter to corporate about this.

[simplelife4me]

I dumped ATT dsl and went to Time Warner for double the speed and half the cost ; ).

[kib]

Had a weird conversation over Thanksgiving - we all agreed about Syrian Refugees, thankfully, but not when it came to Ma Bell. My position is that destruction of the dreaded Ma Bell Monopoly was not good for consumers, and from an investment standpoint, it probably wasn't meant to be. Her position was that this is all a process. I sd really, a process that has left us with both crappy service and exorbitant prices, why is that a process that should be encouraged? She smiled her holier-than-thou peace-be-with-the-idiots smile and had another glass of wine. Am I missing something? :confused:

[freshstart]

Since moving into a new construction home 2 yrs ago, all wired up and ready to go for our major cable company, Time Warner, we have had nothing but problems. In 2 years they have been here at least 10 times, they always blame the guy who came before, we get internet download speed of 30 whatevers per minute for all of a week and then it falls back down to 3. It's like internet in the year 2000, you can read a book waiting for pages to load. And ultimately they blame the whole mess on the fact we use tivos and Macs. They claim not to support those which makes it super easy to blame them. I call them, we are fine from their end and I am back trying to get a Time Warner person who is willing to really try. I am renting their modem and router combo because I am afraid if I don't, I'll get even less tech support from them. But tivo, mac and my techie brother are telling me they have not seen equipment so old still being used. When I ask TW about that, it's of course completely untrue. I was being charged for 6 cable boxes, we use none, took months to "prove" I didn't have them.

Anyway, I hate Time Warner, although they do give low prices for your first two years with them.

[kib]

Slightly off topic ... back when DH and I were dating long distance, we'd play gin online in a live chat-room type site. With Juno Dial Up on my end. Now, ten years later with "better" computers and "much better" internet, I tried that the other day and it was Excruciatingly slow, much worse than 2005. Century Link. Sigh.

[freshstart]

Does anyone remember what it was like to get your first email? I got mine freshman year of college, 1988. It was campus email, not something on the WWW which I am pretty sure we had never heard of at that time. I got an email from my crush. The first Match!

[SteveinMN]

ultimately they blame the whole mess on the fact we use tivos and Macs. They claim not to support those which makes it super easy to blame them.
I hate when companies pull that $#!+. My guess is that they were only too happy to sell you Internet service without such qualifications. I can understand they don't want to/cannot support something in a true minority like, say, Trumpet Winsock. But when tivo is almost a generic term for DVRs and the Mac market share in the consumer world approaches 35%, claims like that just make them look like clueless idiots. >8)


I am renting their modem and router combo because I am afraid if I don't, I'll get even less tech support from them.
Better believe it. They will always try to blame your modem/router -- hardware problem, you configured it wrong, etc. For years I rented a modem from Comcast just to avoid that nonsense; when they started charging us the equivalent of a modem-and-a-half every year I finally bought my own from their list of supported boxes.

This was discussed in another thread here, but when telecommunication is a basic utility, consumers really ought to have more recourse than they get with "the only game in town".