Equipment Rental Policy - Rent 1 month and return??

[Guest]

Can anyone confirm or clarify what the current policy is regarding equipment rental for new legacy ATT DSL service for San Jose, CA? I talked to a Sonic Sales Rep last week about the cost of equipment rental, and he told me you could rent for 1 month then return it afterwards to avoid further rental fees. But yet on the Sonic website it says nothing that you can do this. Rather it says equipment rental is required for the duration of service.

So which is it? What actually appears on your Sonic billing statement speaks volumes. Any of you currently have ATT legacy DSL service, using your own 3rd party modem/gateway after having only rented equipment for a month and not incurring further rental fees on your billing statements?

[digitalbitstream]

I rented and returned, and the $6.50 charge dropped from the bill. AT&T on the other hand let me purchase and keep the official equipment, a rare case of AT&T acting more liberally than Sonic.

[Fritz]

Thanks for this thread. I've been renting all along while my old AT&T modem sits in a box because I thought I was required to rent.

[zebtron]

The main issue, as I understand it, is that Sonic will not provide support for any hardware other than the rented device and that a DSL device other than they ADSL2+ one they provide will not allow the full speed that they support.

from Sonic support

"Unfortunately we do not have the ability to fully support any 3rd party modems because we are simply not trained on all the available models out there. The rental modem is only required for the first month of service. We require it for that first 30 days as the modem provides us with multiple troubleshooting and diagnostic tools should anything be wrong at start up. After the first month you can opt out if you wish. If you are looking for a 3rd party modem I would suggest an ADSL2+ compatible modem that is Bridged by default and with no AT&T branding on it. You may also need to log into the modem and configure the VPI to be 0 and the VCI to be 35. Please note however that the $6.50 rental fee of our modem provides an unlimited warranty on the modem and inclusion into the Fusion Wire Plan where internal wiring issues can be repaired at no cost to you. If you have further quest!"

[clairet]

Pretty much every DSL modem sold locally supports ADSL2+ service. You can try to use an older modem but as zebtron said, you might get slower speeds. It really depends on the distance though and in some cases, getting an ADSL2+ modem may not boost your speed any more than your older modem did.