Ok, I really, really tried to keep DSL. Some may wonder why I tried, but really DSL has been so darned reliable for me, I wanted to keep that. AT&T seemed to have other plans, however.

I wanted to get rid of the traditional phone line since it was costing way too much for what I was getting out of it. I signed up with Vonage, who couldn’t port my phone number since DSL was ‘attached’ to it. So I called up AT&T and asked to switch my DSL over to a dry pair. In the process of doing so, they ‘moved’ my 6Mb DSL to the dry pair and it magically became 1.5Mb DSL. No amount of calls, technician visits, etc. could explain why they couldn’t give me back the 6Mb DSL. The technician that came out tested the line and said it was capable of 4.8Mb, but that the switch was probably maxed out. Sigh.

So I tried, and gave up. And did what I really didn’t want to do, and called Charter Communications. We already had over-priced cable from them, so I was a little reluctant to go further, but my neighbor assured me that it was reliable and fast. I won’t bore you (too late!) with all the issues I had getting it set up the way I wanted to, but in the end, I wound up with 10MB cable internet. 10Mb that is really 10Mb!

Testing through Speedtest.net has consistently scored over 9,400Kbps, and this morning it tested:

Which isn’t really fair to compare that to this:

But it’s AT&T’s fault I even got the chance to!

So for now, I’m quite happy! I can’t really believe I said that about my cable company.