What - Who - do you use for internet connection?

[Dogmama]

Right now the phone company is my internet connection. I also have a land line & it's expense & unreliable (older home, older wiring.)

Who or what do you use? Do you like them? My ISP is a local company and I really want to keep them, if possible, because when I call it's a real person who is actually helpful.

I was thinking about WiFi but I don't even really know what that is. I'm so technology impaired. I need a teenager!

Help!

[malkin]

Brewer switched ours to the tv cable company after a big fight with the phone co. when they screwed up. Cable is just as bad.

[Dogmama]

yeah, my neighbor has cable & hates it too.

[Eden]

Over the years we've gone from having regular modem access to ADSL, first from Earthlink, from whom we also used to get land line phone service. Now we've dropped the land line completely and have gone to the source for the DSL and get it from a company called MegaPath. Earthlink was just contracting their facilities anyway, charging us more and throttling our speeds..... (especially upload). Megapath's customer service has been quite good.

Earthlink was a seriously, seriously frustrating series of call centers where the people were 1/2 way around the world, reading a script out of a book and really had no idea what they were talking about. When we changed our phone land line to them we had already been using their DSL for several years. They screwed up and did not connect our new service properly. We were without internet or phone in our house for nearly 2 months trying to get it straightened out, during which time they were changing us for service and then they charged us a cancellation fee because in order to straighten out the whole mess they had to basically terminate our service and start over like we were a brand new customer. When after hours on the phone one guy told me that the problem was that they just didn't offer ASDL in our neighborhood (we'd been using them for the last 5 years.... all we were trying to do was add the phone!!!) I just about lost it.... I believe my phone number was actually blacklisted from the call center. I finally ended up being able to speak to someone in this country who cleared up most of the mess, though I don't think they *ever* properly credited me for the 2 months that we did not have service and the cancellation fee that I should not have been charged (not to mention all of my cell phone minutes because I didn't have a phone... ATT was quite prompt at cutting that off when they were asked to...).

We have wifi - but that is something you set up in your own house. you don't have to pay to run it, beyond buying the wifi transmitter - we're a Mac household so we have an Airport Express (PC's can use it too though)

[ny biker]

I get internet through the cable company.

When I moved to my current home in 2004 the people at Verizon offered me DSL while I was in the process of arranging to move my landline account to the new address. I said okay, they said they would send me the equipment, but they never followed up. A few months later when I was on the phone with them again for some reason, they again offered DSL, I again said okay and again they never followed up. So much for Verizon DSL.

Next I tried Earthlink, but had problems getting it to work with my router and their customer service just passed the buck to the companies that made my pc and router (who passed it back to Earthlink -- I think I spent about 24 hours on the phone to various customer service numbers over the course of several days trying to get things to work.)

So I gave up, returned the equipment to Earthlink and went with the cable company (Comcast) instead. It is expensive, but I have few problems with it and the tech support is surprisingly good.

My sister and parents get internet from their cable company (Optimum) and they also don't seem to have problems with it.

I know several people who have Verizon Fios for tv and internet and they're happy with it. Fios is not currently available in my neighborhood.

[Catrin]

I do not have cable, I have AT&T Uverse - internet only I do not have Uverse television. The Uverse modem is wi-fi and I bought a Sony Internet Media Streaming Device (that is the actual name) with which I stream Netflix directly to my hi-def television - and there are a lot of other services that I can stream to my TV from the Sony device - not all of which comes with a charge. I have rabbit ears for local channels which I rarely watch outside of the news and that suits my needs. I did bump up my internet speed to support the streaming video - but it is still far, far cheaper than having both internet and cable.

[OakLeaf]

I was thinking about WiFi but I don't even really know what that is.

I think you're thinking of WiMax. That's an option for rural wireless internet that's never really taken hold in this country - but it is available in some places, so it could be worth checking on. As I understand it, it's faster than 3G but not as fast as 4G.

The trouble with the cellular route is the data limits. It's fine for a phone, but when you start thinking about all the internet you use on your computer all day, including the high-res graphics that you'd get on either laptop or iPad, it adds up.

I've got no choice where I am - too far from the road for cable, wrong side of the trees for satellite, so ADSL from the local phone company it is.

[jessmarimba]

She may be thinking of Clearwire (or may want to consider it) - it's transmitted via radio, somehow? You don't need to wire anything for that one, the modem just picks up a signal. I had that when I lived in VA and it might've been $35 a month. Not the fastest, but pretty adequate, since I wasn't a gamer and didn't need to move files with any sort of speed.

They don't have coverage here, or didn't when I moved, so I have Comcast cable internet. No TV, no land line, and I don't live in a neighborhood that's wired for the spiffy high-tech internet that they'll let you buy from a phone company without a land line. Comcast isn't the best and I think I pay around $50 for just basic internet. Big to that.

[azfiddle]

We had intermittent outages during heat and rain with mindspring (earthlink) using DSL over the phone line. We switched to the cable company and we're paying just a little more but we haven't had any outages since then.

[Owlie]

I use the Time Warner, but the internet only, and I did so in Cleveland as well. The only time I had a problem was when I was given the wrong modem in Cleveland, and I'd have outages periodically. A new modem fixed it. I used my own router for wireless internet until it died in March.

[eofelis]

We have Century Link (it use to be called Qwest) for DSL. We have basic landline service with them too. I pay $20/mo for the DSL. When the promo $20/mo DSL rates expire I have been successful in calling them and negotiating the price back down. It's 3mps and that has been sufficient to watch videos online. We are watching the ATOC online right now!

[Dogmama]

We have Century Link (it use to be called Qwest) for DSL. We have basic landline service with them too. I pay $20/mo for the DSL. When the promo $20/mo DSL rates expire I have been successful in calling them and negotiating the price back down. It's 3mps and that has been sufficient to watch videos online. We are watching the ATOC online right now!

That's who I have for landline and DSL and I pay over $70 Maybe I need to call & see if I can negotiate a lower price - but I doubt it. Maybe they'd prorate my bill for all of the times that my phone was out of service?

(I feel like I'm just b*tching about everything these days!)

[Irulan]

Comcast here. I negotiated a super deal on the fast package and never went back. We has Qwest dsl for a long time. There was a three day outage that they kept saying was a problem on our end. Three modems later I gave up and called for a tech to come out a fix things: his comment was, " why, there is a neighborhood problem that should be fixed soon". Boy was I pissed. If they had just told me the truth about the problem, I wouldn't have been pulling my hair out trying to fix something that wasn't broken. I called Comcast ten minutes later. Now, they have us over a barrel with cost, but its much faster and more reliable by a long shot..

[pll]

Right now the phone company is my internet connection. I also have a land line & it's expense & unreliable (older home, older wiring.)

Who or what do you use? Do you like them? My ISP is a local company and I really want to keep them, if possible, because when I call it's a real person who is actually helpful.

I was thinking about WiFi but I don't even really know what that is. I'm so technology impaired. I need a teenager!

Help!

If you are happy with your ISP and all you want is wi-fi (i.e. a wireless local area network) to connect your laptop, smart phones, tablets, etc, just buy a wireless router. I have a Cisco Linksys E4200 that the tech folks at school recommended to me. You just plug it to your modem box and then set it up: configure some security options, give the network a name and password.

The picture below shows the hardware behind a TV in my place (my ISP is my cable company, but I don't have a choice because my condo association was locked by the builder into a 10 year contract with said cable company). The wireless router is the box on the right of the picture. It connects to the box on the left (the cable modem) and the the latter connects to the wall.

[pll]

Dogmama: Just to better understand -- it seems you are reasonably satisfied with the internet service (ISP) but unhappy with the unreliable phone service, correct? If the internet service is unreliable, scratch my router comment...

Good internet and phone service is like the holy grail in this country... These are "unique" services in which customer loyalty is punished with increased charges and crappy service. All enabled by legislation that prevents competition at the local level.