About a week ago, I decided I would finally abandon Earthlink as my ISP. When I got DSL many years ago through an ISP that Earthlink later acquired, I was getting about 500 kbps per second for $50/month. As of last week, I was still getting about 500 kbps per second for $50/month. After reading about several plans from DSLExtreme via SBC and other plans direct from SBC that were either much cheaper or much faster, I decided enough was enough. I use my ISP email address for only a few mailing lists, so the barrier to changing ISPs was pretty low. Since my house is just over 5,000 feet from the SBC central office that provides us with phone service, I was pretty confident I could get faster speeds than 500 kbps through the phone lines.
Then on Friday, I got an email from Earthlink telling me that within three days my download speed would be boosted to up to 3 Mbps. All I needed to do was turn off my DSL modem for twenty seconds and reboot it, and the upgrade would take effect. Tonight I did just that, and boom, I’m getting numbers ranging from 1.4 Mbps to 2.6 Mbps from the speed meter at 2wire.com. The speed comes out at a little over 1.9 Mbps pretty consistently.
This totally rocks. It’s like going from dial-up to DSL all over again.
Although I might have called Earthlink before switching, I kind of doubt that I would have. When I checked prices at their website recently, I first had to use their form to check DSL availability for my house. The response was “High Speed Unavailable…but Accelerated Dial-up access is available in your area”, despite the fact that I had submitted the form through an Earthlink/Covad DSL connection from my house. They really need to fix that.