cable vs at&t broadband

Yes, a lot of great info there but I couldn't find anyone with an AT&T review.

broadband, given the figures you provided (which are _always_ listed in kiloBITS per-second, to inflate them of marketing purposes, although they would claim it's a throwback from the days when things were so slow they were measured that way - yeah, right), will be much slower than you cable connection.

You can expect a max download speed on ATT broadband to be around 80kb (that's kiloBYTES) per-second (ouch), given your figures.

I'd stick w/ the cable.

-Jon

Do you mean 512 kilobits = to only 80 kilobytes?

Approximately, yes - and that is a "best estimate" - it's usually lower.

-Jon

I just called them (1-877-288-3485) to find out if it's bytes or bits, and the guy said, he is sure it's 512 kilobytes.

does anybody have this AT&T wireless internet service?

Rubbish - AT&T tech support and sales droids are notoriously utterly clueless.  Bandwidth costs commercial carriers around $50 per megabit, wholesale.  As such, they are obviously not selling it at 75% below cost, as they would fold.

Also, one visit to their website reveals how full of crap they are - nowhere on the entire site does it specify the bandwidth figures you quoted (in fact, they refuse to quote *any* figures, simply referring to it vaguely as "high-speed" (yeah, right)).

Must best advice - if you still don't believe me, get it in writing (and make sure they spell out, not abbreviate the word 'kilobytes'.  Then all you have to do when they short change you by a factor of 8 on the bandwidth is get together a team of high-priced agressive lawyers (because you know AT&T aready has them), and then you might stand a remote chance of getting some money back that you paid into a misrepresented product.

-Jon (who works in the communications industry for a living, and knows better than to believe in such fairy tales)

wanda,

You have a couple of old questions from back in December that you may have forgotten about.  While you are on the site would you please take a few minutes and update them or close them out.

TIA for helping to clean up the old questions.

teacher_mod
Community Support Moderator
Experts-Exchange
teacher_mod@experts-exchange.com

Jon,
I'm not saying you are wrong, after what you said and reading several newsgroup posts on at&t, I'm about to give up on the idea. I've only read one report of good service and fast speeds, but he didn't say what he's comparing the fast speed to, maybe he had a 14k modem before, because everyone else had a horror story and many have said that they were lied to.

teacher,
I'm sorry, I don't know of any. could you post the links?
I looked at my "?" history and all show PAQ.

Wanda,

http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/qShow.jsp?ta=html&qid=20007248

http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/qShow.jsp?ta=flash&qid=20009504

They are on the second page of your history, that is probably why you
missed them.

Thanks for responding to my post.

teacher_mod
Community Support Moderator
Experts-Exchange
teacher_mod@experts-exchange.com

"...everyone else had a horror story and many have said that they were lied to."

Not surprising - another point against AT&T broadband is the fact that they say "128k up" - every service offering that I have ever seen that claims this is talking about kilobits, not kilobytes.

Trust me - their techs/salesdroids are idiots, and AT&T broadband is relying on the fact that even if their techs constantly spew incorrect info about the service, that they will be able to weasel out of any consequences of this by virtue of their team of highly paid lawyers.

Stick with the cable service - you will thank me later.

I realize I may seem a bit overbearing and crass with such blanket statements - however, I have been supporting myself by working from my house for the past 2.5 years by providing communications consulting services to multiple clients - I don't think they'd keep using my services if I was often wrong in situations such as these.

-Jon

P.S.  Although I appreciate the work of teacher_mod, I always check how many unanswered questions that a person has before I respond to a question of theirs - I hardly consider two or three open questions to be offensive, but then again, I didn't bother to check the dates on those open questions...

teacher,
I closed them out, sorry bout that.

jon,
I think you are right, I'm going to leave this "?" open a while longer incase some one comes in here and has at&t, I'd like to hear what they say.

No prob - I am confident that it will simply provide verification of the above.

Cheers,
-Jon

I'm not even on the same continent so I can't make comment about AT&T exeperience.  I can make a comment about kilobits and bytes.

When expressed correctly a byte is expressed with an uppercase "B"
When expressed correctly a bit is expressed with a lowercase "b"

A byte is 8 bits.  So 512Kb is 64KB.  And 512KB is 4096Kb.  Somehow I doubt anybody is offering that sort of service.  T1 is 1500Kb and will cost you something like $1200/month

Indeed (and I thank you for the confirmation).

If speed is what you are looking for, stick with the cable. Some (if not all) satellite services require a phone line for the upload portion of data. That will still be a bottleneck.

Are there any other cable services available other than the one you are currently using? I'm a bit surprised at the price increase. The cable provider here (western NY) is offering 6 month introductory deals at about half price to gain new accounts.

jlauster - dish != satellite service

Could quite easily be a wireless connection to some local tower or building (which I'm guessing is the case, since there is such limited coverage - satellites seem to be able to function over a wider geographical area).

But I thank you for confirming that it is a bad idea in any case compared to cable.

-Jon

Once again, I've been "Captained"!   :-)

Righto on the dish not necessarily being satellite. Blanked the local out.

Thanks,
John

one other caveat. A friend had a satellite broadband connection. At first his downloads were great then they slowed down. At about the same time I read an article about how many of the broadband providers had oversold their available bandwidth and were turning down the connection speed on customers. He had some benchmarks from when he signed up and when we checked it was about 20% of what it was originally. Whatever they tell you get it in writing and check.

Wanda - we now have three confirms in addition to my original answer.  Thinking about closing this one?

I'm thinking more folks aren't commenting because

a) this question is so old
b) you have the correct answer

-Jon

I still have not heard from anyone that actually has at&t broadband to get an answer, but I don't want anyone to get tied of seeing this question.

wanda - [removed by teacher_mod] I (apparently) waste quite a bit of my time dispelling the lies being fed to you by the idiots at AT&T, and then you go and give points to someone who posted one link to a site full of *very* anecdotal opinions and never posted again?

Thanks a lot.

I will be visiting your other questions to inform folks what a raw deal you tend to give.

-Jon

P.S.  You could have at least split the points.

Experts Exchange maintains a professional site and does not appreciate
the foul language used in this question The * characters do not change
anything. We encourage members and experts to keep their responses
positive. If you disagree with a post, express your opinion without
the use of offensive language. Experts Exchange does not tolerate the
use of foul language.

The use of profanity in this comment is not appropriate:

From: The--Captain
Date: 08/03/2001 05:15PM PST

If you want to continue to use Experts Exchange, do not include foul
or offensive language, as you have in the above comment.

I have edited the offensive comment to spare others users of the site.

Thank you,

teacher_mod
Community Support Moderator
Experts-Exchange
teacher_mod@experts-exchange.com

The--Captain,

A friendly bit of advice.  If you feel that you have been treated unfairly in a question then take the complaint to Community Support. The approach you took here will put you in the wrong every time.  I would advise against carry a grudge into future questions.

teacher_mod
Community Support Moderator
Experts-Exchange
teacher_mod@experts-exchange.com

teacher_mod - I presume you are referring to the part of the AUP that prohibits:

"Posting, transmitting or linking to profane language, descriptions of situations or scenarios considered, in the opinion of Experts Exchange, inappropriate for the Experts Exchange membership"

Hmm - sounds to me like you're full of it (Oops - was my usage of "it" profane?).  In fact, unless you can point me to the hidden yet definitive list that must exist on this site of what is profane and what is not (since you and I obviously do not agree on the subject), I'd say the AUP is pretty much saying that it is decided on a case-by-case basis, which makes your statements about not posting profanity again in the future look rather silly.

Also, I might point out that your intrepretation of the asterisks is completely subjective - I guess you are not aware that my friends and I say "What the funk?" all the time to each other when in public so as not to offend the tender ears of those like yourself.  Looks like I'm not necessarily the one with profanity in mind.  I'm guessing this exact situation is why the AUP mentions nothing about asterisks, and also why I never get complaints from anyone when I post the word 'Micros**t', or use the word crap.  

To summarize, I will in the future avoid using the sequence of characters described by an 'f' followed by two asterisks and then a 'k'.  If you don't have a list of other 'profanity' that you wish me not to use in the future, then please be quiet, since I obviously cannot read your mind.

Surely you see the illogic in saying "Don't ever do this thing, but I refuse to absolutely define what this thing is."

To address your other admonishment - I get warned off from posting to certain questions from time to time, and have always appreciated the advice (after following up on the reasons why).  You're the first moderator I've seen take issue with it.  It's not like I would go around saying "Never answer questions from wanda!!!", but rather "Please review what I think is a good example of thoughtless and arbitrary grading from wanda here: http://www.experts-exchange.com/jsp/qShow.jsp?ta=broadbandgen&qid=20148007 before deciding to post an answer or comment to this question.  Thanks, -Jon"

I await your reply.

-Jon