I have finished my 1-yr commitment to AT&T for $14.95/mo 768 kbps DSL service. Going into this, I was under the impression that AT&T provided some file/website space, but apparently they had discontinued that not long before I started my commitment. Largely on account of that filespace issue, I felt that after my one year was up, I would switch to Sonic. I have also worked with a website customer of mine who is on Sonic, and who also has his home DSL service with Sonic, and things have been pretty happy all around. Since I am done with the 1-yr intro, AT&T is now charging me $19.95/mo.
I also have AT&T measured-rate (as opposed to flat-rate) phone service.
So my current DSL + phone service is costing me about $38-39/mo. And I get pissed that AT&T about every six months seems to jack up the phone rates even more.
Sonic's Fusion one-line service looks like a great deal for about the same price. Keep the same phone #, but additionally get long-distance service at no additional cost. My communications speed to/from the computer will also likely go up, maybe to 6-8 Mbps (at least for download). I am in an apt. complex in Larkspur (just south of San Rafael), and Sonic's webpage says I am about 7,070 feet from the local serving office (which I suspect is the AT&T building that I recall seeing many years ago down a side street in downtown Larkspur).
So I want to check the particulars of my situation to see what potential there is for headaches when I move my service to Sonic.
The DSL modem that came with the AT&T package about a year ago is the Westell F90-610025-06 ProLine Single Port Ethernet Modem. I have the Technician Readout in case there are any ?s there. Somewhere I saw that maybe I won't even have to reprogram the modem to point at sonic when the lines are switched from AT&T to Sonic. Just how likely is this to be the case, and if not, how hard is it to reprogram the modem? There are some strings in the readout that have att.net and sbcglobal.net, so...
I am seriously concerned about losing the emails that are going into the AT&T email account during the switchover. I am wondering if I should get my sonic account set up (at least as far as emails go) before initiating the switchover from AT&T service.
I notice a blurb on the Fusion page about the prohibition of using dial-up service to access the internet. Is there really going to be a problem with using dialup for five minutes / week to access the NIST time sync (+ the antivirus DAT file update that invariably jumps into the scene). It's just easier to dial out for that short time rather than dealing with the DSL modem. The only other time I would be using dialup would be if I lost DSL service, as I did for a few hours a few months ago with AT&T.
W2K SP4 - I don't think that will be an issue.
That's all I can think of for now...
I also have AT&T measured-rate (as opposed to flat-rate) phone service.
So my current DSL + phone service is costing me about $38-39/mo. And I get pissed that AT&T about every six months seems to jack up the phone rates even more.
Sonic's Fusion one-line service looks like a great deal for about the same price. Keep the same phone #, but additionally get long-distance service at no additional cost. My communications speed to/from the computer will also likely go up, maybe to 6-8 Mbps (at least for download). I am in an apt. complex in Larkspur (just south of San Rafael), and Sonic's webpage says I am about 7,070 feet from the local serving office (which I suspect is the AT&T building that I recall seeing many years ago down a side street in downtown Larkspur).
So I want to check the particulars of my situation to see what potential there is for headaches when I move my service to Sonic.
The DSL modem that came with the AT&T package about a year ago is the Westell F90-610025-06 ProLine Single Port Ethernet Modem. I have the Technician Readout in case there are any ?s there. Somewhere I saw that maybe I won't even have to reprogram the modem to point at sonic when the lines are switched from AT&T to Sonic. Just how likely is this to be the case, and if not, how hard is it to reprogram the modem? There are some strings in the readout that have att.net and sbcglobal.net, so...
I am seriously concerned about losing the emails that are going into the AT&T email account during the switchover. I am wondering if I should get my sonic account set up (at least as far as emails go) before initiating the switchover from AT&T service.
I notice a blurb on the Fusion page about the prohibition of using dial-up service to access the internet. Is there really going to be a problem with using dialup for five minutes / week to access the NIST time sync (+ the antivirus DAT file update that invariably jumps into the scene). It's just easier to dial out for that short time rather than dealing with the DSL modem. The only other time I would be using dialup would be if I lost DSL service, as I did for a few hours a few months ago with AT&T.
W2K SP4 - I don't think that will be an issue.
That's all I can think of for now...