broadband in east Watertown

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> writes:

> The best I've heard about RCN is that some people think they're "sorta OK".  
> Most stories I heard are of intense incompetence getting the service 
> installed and in their customer support department.

I've had a few billing snafu's but all of them have been fixed within
two months.  Normally it goes:
        1) I find a problem on my bill
        2) I call to complain
        3) The person claims it was fixed
        4) next month the problem is only partly fixed
        5) I call again, complain louder, explain the original problem,
           explain the "new" problem, and repeatedly asked if they fixed
           it, and make sure I get their name and location and let them
           know I will use it if it isn't fixed.
        6) next month the bill is fixed :)

> Internet access is too important.  Pay the extra money for reliablility and 
> cluefulness.  A lot of us use Speakeasy DSL and love it.

I've had relatively decent luck with my CM service from RCN.  Granted,
they perform a lot of unscheduled maintenence, and are pretty poor
about announcing planned maintenence.  They've rebooted core routers
in the middle of the day, and my CM RTT varies from anywhere between
20ms and 130ms, based as far as I can tell on the phase of the moon.

The major issue I have with the concept of speakeasy (or any other
DSL) is that I don't think I can get nearly as much capacity as I can
with the CM, let alone for a decent price.  I'm something like 12.5-k'
from the CO, and the best that any DSL company will offer me is
384kbps, which can't match the 1-3Mb I get from RCN.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available