[clue-tech] DSL ISP recommendations

[Nate Duehr]

William wrote:

> I'm not at all convinced of the "higher cost for lower speed" angle.  I pay FRII $30 per month and
> I get unrestricted 1.5Mbps u/d.  If I wasn't so far away from the Qwest POP, I'd have 7Mbps. 
> Lower speed:  No.  Higher cost:  Where?

Umm, I could be wrong, but when I total up my Qwest transport bill and 
my FRII bill they come out together to more than Qwest would charge for 
their "Premier" service at 3-5 MB/s, and I only have 1.5 Mb/s from FRII 
currently.

On the flip side, I would be down to one real IP at that price.  Perhaps 
I should compare apples to apples.

With Qwest, I would have to deal with low-quality mass-produced 
call-center support staff for anything at least through level 2, unless 
I got lucky and hit a sharp up-and-comer who's doing his/her time at the 
lower levels.  I've NEVER had that experience with FRII, all their techs 
are clueful.

However, you raise an interesting point - I don't think FRII would raise 
my portion of my bill that goes to them if I ordered a higher speed 
transport link from Qwest.  (How they pull that off, I have no idea.)

I should make some phone calls if what I'm really after is higher speed 
and see just how much the transport portion of the bill would go up if I 
raised the speed.  (And then pray some silly overly-complex ticketing 
system at Qwest doesn't decide that my order is a Cancel/Renew order and 
they cut off the circuit for a month in the process!)  I do qualify for 
7MB/s down here, according to the original Qwest installer's tests. 
Lucky me!  Even luckier if I thought I really needed it bad enough to 
pay the much higher prices for it!

Thanks for the thoughts.  I want to just turn on Larry the Cable Guy for 
inspiration and "Get 'er Done!", but the darn thing works well and I 
hate breaking things that work -- that creats additional unnecessary 
stress.  Is an extra couple of Mb/s worth it... hmm... maybe... (GRIN).

Nate