All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

SBC

Phone line back up

In DSL, SBC on 2 June 2005 with no comments

The SBC technician just fixed the phone line. He said the line broke, so he switched me to another line. A speed test from Broadband Reports gave me 1277 kbps / 321 kbps. I believe that was basically a 35-hour turnaround. Not bad, I guess. I hope it’d be different if I was a business. Now I need to clean up around home, since I can’t go to work for today. It’d be a waste of time, especially with the commute.

Phone line down

In DSL, SBC on 1 June 2005 with 2 comments

My phone line isn’t working right now. I called SBC customer support, and they said they’d need to send a technician to check it out. The nearest appointment is for Thursday. So, if it doesn’t come back up by then, I’ll have to stay home that morning to wait for the person. By the way, I’m posting this by connecting with my cell phone (LG VX4400) with a USB cable, and using the Extended Network (3G) via Verizon Wireless. It says I’m getting 115.2 KB/s. Feels like dialup. Anyway, since it counts as airtime, I’m doing this during off peak minutes (past 9pm). Then again, I don’t get home from whatever I’m doing until around that time anyways. At least Andy lives a few blocks away, and I can just park outside his house if I really need to get online - you know, cuz of the WiFi. It’s not wide open, but I know the security key, and he’s fine with it. I think.

AOL Phasing Out Broadband Service

In DSL, SBC on 18 November 2004 with 2 comments

I sometimes forget to check out other blogs for a week or so, and I’m glad to have stumbled upon this bit of news.

Basically, AOL is forcing customers to find another broadband service here in the United States. It hasn’t been all over, just in a few states. But it will happen all over the country next year.

Secondary source

(Thanks Chris.)

Broadband Reports is one of the best places to find information on the best provider possible.

I’ve been with SBC DSL for a long time (Pacbell DSL), and other than a few problems last month, it’s been great for the most part. Well, except for the outsourcing, it’s great. You can search for SBC on my site and see everything (all three posts as of now).

Did I mention about the Broadband Reports forums, where one of the SBC techs felt so bad about my experience with the outsourcing that he bumped up my upload speed?

SBC Yahoo DSL Struggling

In DSL, SBC on 30 September 2004 with no comments

Update: I was down again this morning from 10:30am to 11:30am.

I haven’t been able to get online basically for the last three evenings due to problems on their end. They’ve been so good until now! Perhaps they’re making up for “non-downtime” for all the years I’ve been with them essentially trouble-free…

Here’s a little rant about the SBC Yahoo DSL status updates the technicians post when you call them.

(more…)