Re: [PLUG] and now, the more mundane

[Mike Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

On 8/25/2011 12:13 PM, bergman@merctech.com wrote:
> In the message dated: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:45:22 EDT,
> The pithy ruminations from Floyd Johnson on 
> <[PLUG] and now, the more mundane> were:
> => I was originally going to call this "bleeping residential DSL".
> => 
> => Once again, the Verizon DSL experienced a weather-related line protocol
> => failure (10:27 AM), said firm's recent and past labor issues being
> 
> 	[SNIP!]
> 
> => 
> => For those of you living in the city limits: 
> 
> 	[SNIP!]
> 
> 
> I considered DSL, but I don't have viable copper running to the house (no
> land line, old wiring, etc.), and Verizon has been "less than helpful"
> about providing info about dry-loop DSL, which I believe is a required
> offering under their municipal charter.

It's required to offer it; apparently they're not required to *actually*
provide it. :-) I never heard of anyone who ever had dry loop, certainly
not any residential DSL customer.

> I had Comcast cable for about 2 years. Intermittent outages (~1x/month,
> from minutes to hours, often correlated with weather conditions).

I had DSL up until 2008. Same thing happened to me - outage for a few
minutes, every week. I still get those occasionally with Comcast, but
the less often. The last time I noticed it, it happened after midnight
(and on a work night). So I just went to bed, and it was back when I got
up the next morning.

> => (2) Have you generally thrown in the towel on DSL and shelled out for
> => fiber to your premises? 
> 
> Not available in my area of Manayunk.

Is FIOS available anywhere but the NorthEast? It's not available down
here in South Philly ...

> 
> => (3) Given its atmospheric nature, is that WiMAX thing hawked by Clear
> => even relevant to you as Linux geeks?
> 
> I've been fairly happy with Clear for the last 13+ months. It's 80% as
> fast as Comcast (residential), has had fewer outages, has had shorter
> duration outages, never required a service call to resolve an outage,
> and is significantly cheaper than Comcast.

My boss has Clear (in South Philly, too); he likes it. He has the slight
occasional outage; what service doesn't? He likes it better than the DSL
he had; it's faster, and he's had less problems (he says; dunno the details)

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