Searching For a New ISP

          My annual contract with Charter Internet is expiring in a couple of weeks so I started shopping around for a new ISP the last two months. One would think that broadband service would get cheaper as time goes on but the reverse is true, I guess because the demand is high since having an internet connection is now a necessity. Renewing with Charter would have cost $44.95 a month and that would have been too much. Verizon no longer offers a dry loop service and requires you to have telephone service bundled with internet service. The bundle would have cost more than $50 so that was also out of the question. I haven't used a regular phone line for more than two years since I've been using Magicjack for domestic and international long distance calls, and a cellphone of course. Dry loop just means you can have internet via the telephone company's wires without phone service. I looked into Clear 4G which required you to buy their modem for $50, then the monthly fee is $34.95, which is not so bad except the download speed is only 1 megabit per second. Finally, after all that search, I found DSLextreme.com which offered dry loop service using Verizon's existing phone lines. Despite some negative reviews about their service, I decided to risk it.
          I ordered it online then waited for DSLextreme to notify me when Verizon had activated the line. Less than a week later, I received the notification. I plugged in my old Verizon modem, powered it up then waited for the the following lights to turn on: power, DSL, ethernet, and internet. Ok, three of them did: power, ethernet, and DSL. Perhaps the signal hasn't reached my home yet so I waited till the next day just to make sure before contacting DSL Extreme. Well at least I know my old modem still works.

          The next day, I emailed the company about the missing internet signal and they gave me a number to call and to ask for Level 2. Just as I was about to call, a technician named Pat called me at home to help set up the modem. I'll spare you the technical details which involved numbers like: 192.168.1.1 and 10.0.0.1 (the IP address of the modem and wireless router). Well, Pat and I worked on attempting to establish an internet connection for two hours without success, and had to stop only because I had to get ready for work in the evening. This was getting too complicated. I expected myself to plug in the modem and the telephone line and get the connection right away like it was when I had Verizon DSL.
          I called tech support again the next day and the first person that answered sounded like someone from a call center in the Philippines. I guess that was Level 1, so I gave my ticket number and asked for Level 2. I was connected to Travis in Woodland Hills, the same place where Pat was. We went through the same process as the previous day but couldn't access the same menus. I mentioned that I did a hard reset of the modem a few hours before and that probably messed it up for whatever information tech support already had on my modem. A hard reset restores the device to factory settings. After a few more tests, Travis found a way (by luck, chance, or skill, I don't know), to finally make the internet light on the modem to work. That could only mean one thing: I finally have internet service from DSL Extreme! And this time it only took about 35 minutes of troubleshooting. Before we hanged up, Travis reminded me not to do another hard reset.
          After making sure that everything was finally in working order, I sent an email to the tech support supervisor to commend and compliment Travis and Pat for their patience and courtesy in helping solve the problem.
          Two days later, the internet connection continues to work without any problems, although the speed is only 1/10th of what I used to have with Charter (3 mbps as opposed to 30 mbps). But as long as I can do whatever I used to do online, I can live with the slower speed. Not that I have much of a choice. Either pay more or live within my means just to stay connected to this thing called the INTERNET.

Blazing Internet For a Reasonable Price

My two year contract with Verizon Internet expired last month. I was paying them $19.99 a month for 1 megabit per second (mbps) download speed, and when the contract expired, I was billed on a month to month basis for 21.99. Last Wednesday afternoon, a door-to-door Charter Communications salesman knocked on my door to ask if I needed cable, phone, or internet service. Normally I would just brush them off and say I don’t need cable because free antenna TV is enough for me and I already have internet service. Since my two year internet agreement expired, I was interested in listening to what Charter had to offer. The guy said he can offer me internet service for 19.99 a month and I asked him how many megabits per second speed, expecting only the same 1 mbps that Verizon offered. To my surprise, he said it would be 12 mbps! I couldn’t believe my ears so I said “are you sure?”, and asked him to repeat it. So what’s the catch? Do I have to pay for monthly modem and router rental fees on top of the 19.99? He said, no catch, I only had to pay an extra 10 dollars for the first month for installation. He also mentioned that it was a back to school promo. I made sure he wrote all that in the work order form. (It bears mentioning that pre-recession, I had 3 mbps service from Verizon for 29.99 a month but that got too expensive for me so I had to downgrade.) We set an appointment for Friday between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the installer to show up. The salesman called me later and said that Friday was full, so we switched it to Saturday morning between 8 to 12 noon.

Come Saturday morning (hmm, wasn’t there a song that started with that line?), I awaited the arrival of the installer while doing my cycling/elliptical/abs workout. I even made it to the shower before he showed up at 11 o’clock. He looked around and asked me where the preinstalled cable wires were. I showed them to him and told him I hadn’t had cable in more than 20 years and those were the only connections I knew. When he tested the wires, there was no power coming out of them so he went outside to look for the cable box. It turns out they had rewired the system and my more than 20 year old connection doesn’t work anymore. He ended up having to drill a hole in my bedroom wall to run a cable from outside, around my bedroom, under the carpet, and into the living room so he could connect the modem/router device. Having finished that at quadruple the time it would normally have taken if my old cable connection still worked, he proceeded to set up my wireless connection. I thanked him very much and apologized for the extra work he had to do. After some instructions from him, I managed to change my wireless network SSID name and password.

One of the first things I did was check the internet speed. It was not quite the advertised speed of 12 mbps but more like 10 mbps. Still blazingly fast compared to the previous 1 mbps. Next I tried downloading a large file while talking on the MagicJack phone. There was nary a drop off in the sound quality. Oh, by the way, that phone call was to Verizon to cancel their service.

That brings me to this question. At that speed, why not share internet service with the neighbors? You can share the password and split the monthly fee. That’s a lot of speed to go around for maybe up to three households. Has anyone heard of such an arrangement or maybe do you yourself share with your neighbors?

I know there are much faster internet services out there but it seems like I got myself a pretty good deal with this arrangement. I hope there will be no surprise extra fees when I get my bill.

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