 Review by jtudor 
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 6 years, 3335 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Morganton,Burke,NC
 $45 per month (12 month contract)
 about 1 days
 BellSouth
CLEC party: BellSouth
 "Easy online order, Great modem, Fast speed, rock solid service"
 "Offshore tech support nights and weekends is bad, so is echat."
 "Glad to finally switch <10 hours for switchover from ELNK!!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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After suffering through a year contract with Earthlink, and five months of that with mostly unusable service, I switched to Bellsouth for good last week.
My contract was up at the end of August. On the advice of forum members here, I placed a telephone order with BellSouth for service without canceling my Earthlink account. This was done to minimize downtime. My order was placed on August 26th.
Following a few phone calls, and e-mails asking for a letter of authorization, I thought I had everything settled, until a phone call on August 29th informing me that there was some kind of problem with my order, and that it could not be fixed. The order needed to be canceled, and it would take 3 days to clear the system. After it cleared, I would be able to place another order.
I waited until September 3 after lunch to call back in to re-order. When I called, I was told that my previous order still had not cleared the system. Around 11 pm on 9/3, I placed an online order that went through successfully.
I was working from home on 9/4, and the DSL (from Earthlink) went down around 10:30 am. When it did not come back in about an hour, I called Bellsouth tech support to see if they were working on my order, and discovered that they were. The very helpful tech told me that I should be able to log in by 6 pm that night. He said that my order was scheduled to be finished by midnight, but since the local techs do not work past 6 pm, I should be ready to go by then, and if not, to please call back.
Come 8:30 pm, when I got home from a meeting, I connected a Westell modem I already had, and logged in with no problem. The speed was a bit slow for the first few days, in the 700 - 900 range. Those were the same days that Bellsouth was having some problems in the NOC with e-mail, web mail, the portal, and who knows what else, so my speed issue may have been related.
By Monday 9/8 my speed was up to the same that I had been getting from Earthlink, in the 1230/210 range.
I am still waiting on the Bellsouth supplied Westell modem, they shipped the first one to the correct address, but wrong zip code. Overall, I am pleased with the service, and hope to stay that way. At least if there are problems, I will not have to deal with a middleman!
Less than 10 hours with no service for an ISP change is fantastic!
Six months later:
3/18/04
Since switching I could not have been any any happier with the service. I received the Westell 2200 modem, installed it, and have not looked back. I have very consistent speed, in the range of 1240/215 nearly all the time. I am unaware of any downtime since September. E-mail works, browsing works, I don't use newsgroups so i cant comment on them.
I recommend anyone to subscribe to Bellsouth. They may not be perfect in every area, but they do what counts for me, and if the speed comes up in the next few months as predicted, I will be even happier with more upload speed!
14 months with Bellsouth
11/26/04
I have upgraded to the Xtreme speed and I am very happy with the service. At the initial switch my speed was about 1800-1900/318 for a month or two with the Westell 2200-30. I bought a Westell 610014-06 on Ebay and now my speed averages around 2360/318 kbps. The 610014 is made for Centurytel, and looks to have the generic Westell firmware. If it was modified for them, there is no indication of it anywhere in the modem interface. DMH technology is enabled in this model, and it does work.
I still recommend Bellsouth for DSL service. Even with some of the problems they have, my service has been rock solid for well over a year. The only problems I have run into have been network or area wide, there have been no individual issues for me.
07/01/05
Still no complaints with BSFA. My speed remains constant, no sync issues, I have nothing at all to complain about. Higher speed woudl be nice, but I don't really need it. Sometimes while doing web design, a higher upload would be great, but I can certainly live with my 3000/384.
2/20/07
Nearly 3 and a half years after switching, I am still very happy with BSFA.
I moved a couple of weeks ago, ordered new service on Tuesday 9/6/07, phone service was installed on 9/9 by 10 am, and my DSL was active by 4 pm the same day. My new Westell Wireless gateway did not arrive until Monday, but I still had internet over the weekend with a modem I already had.
The Westell installed smoothly, and I was surprised to find that the default configuration had WEP 128 bit security enabled. Excellent move for BellSouth.
I am getting great speed test results, 2200 + on download.
6mb is not available to me, even though I can throw a rock and hit the RDSLAM. 6ms is just not in that box right now I found out from a local technician.
Followup comments:  rhia
join:2007-06-04
Titusville, FL
| frustrated After 2 years with bright house I decided it was a little pricey and figured I would give bellsouth another try since they merged with at&t hoping that with that merge there would be better service...wrong! I was just informed that I would not be able to get dsl till December. My neighbors has bellsouth dsl I used to have it when i was with them. So i am now with one of the biggest companies and stuck with the oldest technology. I have learned a powerful lesson in this process. You get what you pay for | |
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