Hi Jan, Well, I am biased of course, but I did sell a lot of DSL in my day when I was an agent for Verizon and Director of Sales for MAP Internet (now Crocker). What he said could be true, but the fact that your service is poor and they aren't letting you out of your agreement is the tough part, and if you read the fine print it will say that DSL is a "best effort" service meaning they guarantee nothing. But, once you start having problems with DSL they tend to not get much better, it is a distance sensitive product, and unless you are close to the central office where they house their equipment, the service tends to be poor. There might be a loop hole here...if you sign a new agreement, I believe once it goes into effect you have a 60 day period where you can get out of the agreement, it's tucked away in dark rooms written into the tariffs, which they don't want you to know about. I could look into it for you if you like. But try this, I think out there your cable provider is Time Warner, they may have a buy out plan to pay for the $120.00 penalty, it's worth looking into. And yes, cable is best effort as well, but it's not a distance sensitive product and is usually much more consistent that DSL. Plus the infrastructure is more up to date. I hope you get it worked out. Ed Philbrook Comcast Business Services 3303 Main Street Springfield, MA 01107 C: 860-883-7176 O: 413-730-4515 F: 866-597-3230 ________________________________ From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net on behalf of Jan Werner Sent: Fri 7/30/2010 11:28 AM To: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net Subject: [Hidden-tech] A technical question about DSL ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. ** If you did, we all thank you. I have been using a Verizon phone services and DSL bundle since 2004. Last December, I signed up for a year at a new and slightly lower bundle price that raised my maximum DSL speed from 1.5 Mbs to 5.0 Mbs, which they assured me my line would support. Since then, I have had sporadic problems with the DSL service. One is disconnects. My router (D-Link) and the Verizon supplied modem appear to be remain connected, but I there is no service until I perform a manual disconnect and reconnect. This happens irregularly and I usually go for weeks without a disconnect, but there have been a few periods during which I have had to reconnect several times a day. Mostly, my d/l speed has been about 2.8 to 3.0 Mbs, but last month, I started to experience speeds as low as 50 kbs for extended periods. After checking and eliminating any of my own devices and connection as the cause, I placed a service call to Verizon. The technician verified that my problems originated with Verizon and not my hookup and went off to investigate further. He called back later and said that I was about 2000 feet too far away to handle 5.0 Mbs, but that my circuit would support 3.0 Mbs. He said the problems I had been having came from their compensation circuitry trying to adapt to 5.0 Mbs and that if my service were changed to 3.0 Mbs, the DSL should work much more reliably. Verizon, however, refuses to downgrade my service from 5.0 Mbs to 3.0 Mbs unless I either sign up for an additional 12 months or pay a $120 early termination fee and forfeit bundle pricing. Before I take this any further, I would like to know if what the technician told me about compensation circuitry makes any sense to the DSL experts here. I'm not sure I completely believe it, but I'm not an EE and he was wearing a nice red shirt with a big V on it. Jan Werner _______________________________________________ Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net <http://www.hidden-tech.net/> Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members page on the Hidden Tech Web site. http://www.hidden-tech.net/members