| William H. Magill on 2 Jul 2005 13:57:44 -0000 |
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On 01 Jul, 2005, at 14:56, George Theall intoned: Are there any DSL providers servicing West Philly (48th and Baltimore) that do not rely on Verizon as the ILEC? I just cancelled a business-class, naked ADSL line that was on order with Speakeasy for 5 weeks after growing increasingly frustrated by Verizon's apparent failure to deliver a working line. DCAnet uses Verizon in (all?) of University City. I'm out of the Evergreen CO - 38th and Chestnut - and have had the DCAnet DSL service since it was Bell Atlantic. I am right now waiting for the upgrade to the 3.0 meg service from my 1.5 M X 380 K old "InfoSpeed Pro" service (historically classified as business by DCAnet). The upgrade is scheduled for the 5th, and should "simply" be a CO change, one assumes its a provisioning change. As best as I can tell so far: A) my old original Westel modem will continue to function as they (Verizon) are apparently not using ADSL2 here, but simply an upgraded DMT based service. But don't know yet. B) DCAnet claims that the only difference in service I should see is the faster line speed. New speed should be 3M X 768K. There should be no interruption in connectivity (Except, I assume, for the reset of DSLAM.) The new 3.0 meg service will be "residential," and significantly cheaper than the old "pro" service. As I recall, the residential rate is $40 per month (I'm affiliated with Penn) and the new 3meg service will be $64 per month. My old Pro service was about $100 per month. (All rates mentioned are before taxes & etc.) [DCAnet's website is less than useful for finding out cost information, you need to talk directly to a sales rep.] BTW, DCAnet has "deals" for Penn, Drexel, Temple USP affiliates. This is basically a discount but also does, or at least did, provide "back door" IP routing to their nets. The "OldCity" hub is located in the 401 North Broad "Hotel" and is connected directly into the Internet 2 service anchored by Penn (magpi.net). The other option available, I think in all of UC (it depends on the CO), is Cavalier Telephone. http://www.cavaliertelephone.com/ They claim you can add 10 meg DSL for only $25 to your existing Cavalier Phone service. (Nominally $49 per month Cavalier is a CLEC, and while the copper is provided by Verizon, the line is "deeded" to Cavalier. Again, you'll have to talk directly to Cavalier as their service availability is dependent upon CO and their website is generic for their entire service area (they are based in VA, and cover 5 states plus DC). I haven't explored the Cavtel option in depth, it's new. However, they appear to provide a single static IP for residential DSL, and, as with DCAnet, simply provide you with a Modem connection -- apparently unblocked. I also have Time Warner's (aka Urban Cable Works) Road Runner service. Road Runner is also an "unblocked" service. They provide a Toshiba PCX Cable Modem/router. It's a DOCSIS modem. However, SNMP access is apparently disabled, but it does do NAT/DHCP. I don't use that line except in the rare case when I've got problems with the DCAnet line; however, my son uses it for gaming, and recently has been complaining about the modem dropping out. I'm going to be swapping out the modem in the next day or so to see if that fixes the problem. The RR modem is MAC registered with RR and provides the DHCP and NAT service to the boxes behind it. (Mine is connected to an antique LynkSys Wireless 4 port switch.) I've never been convinced that the RR service is as fast as it claims to be (i.e. 10 meg), but only the more typical 3 meg ... but while I routinely check the DSL connection speeds with DSLreports, I haven't done that with the RR connection.
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