AT&T ISP Review & Reader Survey Results

[mikeebb]

I think I've seen that price list before, deep in the AT&T web site as noted. The prices are for Internet as part of a bundle with at least one other service (phone and/or TV) that pumps the total bill up near $90/mo after taxes and fees and misc unexplainable charges. Internet alone at 6 mb/s costs somewhere around $60/mo. And if you don't buy TV (I have a phone and Internet bundle) they will spam you 5+ times a week trying to upsell you.

I supposedly get 6 mb/s. When I do a Speedtest I get that, or a tad better, usually. In normal use, though, things slow down, a lot, with typical transfer rates below 3. Stinks. Feels like a VW cheat going on - they see a speedtest and crank things up.

There is Comcast in the neighborhood, with much faster nominal speeds. Unfortunately, it's known to drop to near AT&T speed in the afternoon and evening when everybody's watching things. And Comcast is a tad more expensive and has reputedly the Worlds Worst Customer Service™. OTOH, Comcast seems to have fewer outages - I've had several significant outages with AT&T (though the longest one - several weeks - wasn't entirely their fault), and frequent (several times a week) brief hiccups. But if you manage to contact them about it (Metro PCS cell phone just works...) they will try to get it fixed, and give you credit (only if you ask!) for the missing time. And even though Uverse voice phone is IP-based it works a little better than Vonage etc. - the router/modem prioritizes AT&T voice traffic.

We really need competition though. CC and ATT precisely match each other for promo bundle prices, though CC's rated internet speed is better. So for similar bundle content you pay the same for either one - tossup. I don't think it'll change until (if ever) Google arrives.

 

[b4upoo]

The only way that many areas will get better net service is if county governments issue a demand to either perform or shut down operations in their counties or cities. Simply create an absolute speed and reliability set of rules and let all know in advance that as technology advances the requirements will become greater.

 

[ronintexas]

Disappointing to see that no reviews on GigaPower, available in Texas and other states.

 

[Tom Tucker]

I live in rural Montana, paying $30.00 for quest/century link DSL. paying for 1.5 MBS, getting 70-85 KBS, century link will not u/g our service without paying 3 million $ up front, a lot of folks out here are paying for a service for which we are not getting, we asked for a fiber line to be laid for about 5-miles which would put it with-in 3-miles from a lot of us, 200 to 350 homes, I'm asking with the new ATT tower installed this June/July, can ATT help us get better service, either wireless or a new DSL line service installed, look into the new tower at Frenchtown Mt, 59834 please.
any feed back go to ttucker@live.com. need lots of help here, thanks.

 

[pocketdrummer]

As long as they limit the amount of data I can use, I'll never switch to AT&T. Companies got along just fine without capping data on WIRED INTERNET for decades, now suddenly it's an issue. What's really an issue is the fact that we're paying more than ever for speeds that have hardly increased. European customers don't have to put up with this crap, why should we?

 

[JacFlasche]

AT&T is so bad that words pale with the wont to describe a corporate entity so ghastly in design and effect.

May all their stockholders genitals shrivel up and fall off. (Not that they would notice or anything. Hell, they haven't noticed how badly their service sucks ass, or could it all be intentional?

Basically if you think that AT&T provides good value in telecommunications you are either a stockholder, a masochist, have no value orientated alternative, or are a complete idiot.

 

[jimmysmitty]

AT&T is so bad that words pale with the wont to describe a corporate entity so ghastly in design and effect.

May all their stockholders genitals shrivel up and fall off. (Not that they would notice or anything. Hell, they haven't noticed how badly their service sucks ass, or could it all be intentional?

Basically if you think that AT&T provides good value in telecommunications you are either a stockholder, a masochist, have no value orientated alternative, or are a complete idiot.

Sadly, ATT provides better service than the local cable company where I am. Neither one are a "value" when compared to other parts of the country. If I was paying full price for my service, for unmetered Uverse, it would be about $90 a month for 24mb down 2mb up. Fortunately, ATT screwed up so much I'm paying nowhere near that.

The local cable company blatantly lies about their speeds and uptime. Their techs look like they were hired as soon as they dropped out of high school. "Business" class internet from the local clowns has no SLA or anything different than residential service. However, on a $65 internet package for residential, they charge $280 for businesses with no differentiation in service. I flat out asked their "sales department" what the differences were since the prices were so different. I was literally told, "They are the exact same thing, businesses just have to pay more..."

I am thankful for ATT despite all of the things wrong with them when compared to other providers in more competitive areas. Just know that, for people who have the misfortune of living in an area like mine, it could be worse.... much much worse.

Their sales department is probably just filled with morons. More than likely the business account has a guaranteed speed, while consumers tend to have a speed that can and will fluctuate, and they also probably pay for a static IP address while consumers tend to have a dynamic IP address.

They still seem to suck where you are. I pay $100 a month and get 150Mbps down from Cox. Last night I was downloading a game update at 16.5MB/s.

 

[jimmysmitty]

AT&T is so bad that words pale with the wont to describe a corporate entity so ghastly in design and effect.

May all their stockholders genitals shrivel up and fall off. (Not that they would notice or anything. Hell, they haven't noticed how badly their service sucks ass, or could it all be intentional?

Basically if you think that AT&T provides good value in telecommunications you are either a stockholder, a masochist, have no value orientated alternative, or are a complete idiot.

Sadly, ATT provides better service than the local cable company where I am. Neither one are a "value" when compared to other parts of the country. If I was paying full price for my service, for unmetered Uverse, it would be about $90 a month for 24mb down 2mb up. Fortunately, ATT screwed up so much I'm paying nowhere near that.

The local cable company blatantly lies about their speeds and uptime. Their techs look like they were hired as soon as they dropped out of high school. "Business" class internet from the local clowns has no SLA or anything different than residential service. However, on a $65 internet package for residential, they charge $280 for businesses with no differentiation in service. I flat out asked their "sales department" what the differences were since the prices were so different. I was literally told, "They are the exact same thing, businesses just have to pay more..."

I am thankful for ATT despite all of the things wrong with them when compared to other providers in more competitive areas. Just know that, for people who have the misfortune of living in an area like mine, it could be worse.... much much worse.

Their sales department is probably just filled with morons. More than likely the business account has a guaranteed speed, while consumers tend to have a speed that can and will fluctuate, and they also probably pay for a static IP address while consumers tend to have a dynamic IP address.

They still seem to suck where you are. I pay $100 a month and get 150Mbps down from Cox. Last night I was downloading a game update at 16.5MB/s.

Yes, their sales department is full of morons. All 2 of them. That's right. Their sales department is literally 2 people. This is a cable company that is HQed in and services only my county. Also, there is no possible way for them to guarantee anything, speed, uptime or otherwise. The service is so awful that it wouldn't be possible. The only guarantees they provide are whatever the legal minimums are as mandated by the state.

I had their service for about 5 months a couple of years ago. I literally had techs coming out every other day because I couldn't get service above 0.05mbps for about 12 hours a day, starting from day one. Their techs were unqualified, obviously had no real training, and had no idea how to fix the issue. They kept saying that "it must be someone nearby with a cheap cable splitter". Surely a $2 cable splitter shouldn't be able to cripple a multi-million dollar cable infrastructure, right?

Anyway, they never could fix it. They ended up writing me a check for my entire length of service with them, plus overages I incurred on my cell bill for tethering and going over my data limit. In return, I had to pinky promise that I wasn't going to sue.

What I mean by a guaranteed speed is that they offer it as a set speed. Most consumer internet speeds are a certain speed with a boost and at certain times will drop due to usage. Most businesses have a direct line allowing them to be able to keep much closer to the speed. For example here at my office we just upgraded to a 1Gbps Ethernet fiber link so it is guaranteed to give us up to 1Gbps and when we test it for the most part it stays between 950-1000Mbps, which is what is expected with normal drop off due to switches, modems etc.

Either way I feel for you. And I found out that Cox just upped the top end speed where I live to 300Mbps.