Over Christmas, the wireless ISP link at my vacation home failed. It took 2.5 days to get the rural ISP to fix the relay point upstream… and I had to “re-educate” technicians about the problem several times.
Looking at the lost productivity, even factoring out Christmas as a day off (despite my plan to give myself the gift of scrubbing my email inboxes of messages that I’ve read, then marked as unread), I’ve lost a ton of productivity. It’s a big setback considering the deadlines and timetables I’m working on.
So, I’ve decided to have AT&T’s $10 the-FCC-made-us-offer-it service installed (which runs crawls at 768 kbps down/128 kbps up). Already 1.5 years into their 2.5 years of the forced offering, I think that AT&T might actually wise up and keep offering the plan after they don’t have to anymore… especially in this economy.
With home offices becoming more and more mission-critical (again, especially in this economy), a couple of days of lost productivity can justify a year’s worth of $10/month DSL service as a backup plan.
Plus, there is some indications that AT&T does actually now appreciate the offering that they so much resisted offering. For example, AT&T now offers Wi-Fi roaming, even on the $10/month plan. Why offer Wi-Fi to customers that AT&T thinks are barely profitable? I suspect AT&T wants to keep the plan, just doesn’t want to tell investors that they like offering it. Then, at the end of the FCC-mandated 2.5 years, they can showcase to investors that they have tons of customers on it, and that it wound up being a profitable venture.
Over the past eight years, the FCC has surprised me quite a bit… we’ve gotten net neutrality, national broadband mandates, and broadband for dial-up speeds. That’s a track record that I hope carries over to the next administration.
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What are the criteria to qualify for $10/month DSL from at&t?
Looking at their site, it appears that 768/128 is $14.95/month? But at the bottom of the page, it says “DSL for as low as $10 per month, for qualifying customers. Enter your number to see if you qualify.” Then it asks for a whole bunch of personal information I don’t want to provide at this time. (This is for my father. He has had DSL from at&t before, but gave it up several months ago.)
Or, is anyone, current or new to at&t, allowed to have this plan and at&t is just being ornery about it?
The requirements are:
* You must have not had an AT&T DSL account within the past 12 months.
* You must have AT&T local phone service.
* You must agree to a one-year commitment with a $50 early termination fee (if you cancel in the first year)
I have tried multiple times to ‘see if I qualify’ for the $10 DSL (I happen to know I do), as it ONLY available online and not over the phone. Their address verification system refuses to recognize my address even when I pick it out of the list of possible matches – the next screen always ignores the choice and says they couldn’t find the address I just chose from the choices they offered me…
Very frustrating and their customer service refuses to help witht he issue, apparently they don’t even have the ability to offer the $10 service at all – over the phone.
I’ve tried with my parents and grandparents addresses as well – no luck.
Rick, I would strongly encourage you to head over to fcc.gov and file an FCC complaint. The FCC wants to hear from people in your situation, they want to force AT&T to make good on their agreement.
I would also file a BBB complaint and a complaint with your state’s public utilities commission.