Dropping SBC

I need to find a different ISP. SBC screwed up our DSL again today. When we woke up, I noticed that our Vonage line didn't have a dial tone. The phone line that has the DSL also didn't have any dial tone. So I called them up, and their automated system recognized the problem and stated that a technition would come out to fix the problem by 6pm.

Around 2pm, I checked the line and the problem had not been resolved. So, I called SBC to check on the status of it. The automated system still stated that the problem would be fixed by 6pm, but I wanted to see if I could get the time that the technicion would be here, so I could make sure that I was here, so I pressed 0 to talk to an person. The person that I talked to said that a cable had been cut and the problem would be fixed by Saturday at 8pm.


Luckily about somewhere between 30 to 60 minutes later the phone line started working again.

This is not the first time that SBC has done something that has affected out internet service. A while ago, I was an extremely happy customer of SpeakEasy DSL (on my SBC phone line), then suddenly it stopped working. They were never able to get it working again, but since they changed the rules for the maximum distance for DSL, Covad said that they would not support it. I had to switch to SBC, because they had "Remote Terminals" that were closer to my house than the Central Offices are. (Also I found out that the FCC only said that phone companies had to give access to the Central Offices to competing DSL providers, not "Remote Terminals")

I think that SBC did something in the Central Office, and that pretty much forced me to switch to them for my DSL.

I am going to look into Cable Modem or Fixed point wireless for my internet access, because I don't want to be tied to SBC for my service.