I was surprised to see the degree of venom that people spat out at SBC. Sure, the company had hiccups, but it's not bad if you live in a major metropolitan area. I think maybe people don't write reviews of services as often when the services work, but if they don't work, they are more likely to write reviews. Either that or my girlfriend and I both lucked out with our DSL services (she lives about 10 miles away and also uses SBC Yahoo DSL).

COST: If you switch phone companies you can get SBC Yahoo DSL for about $15/month and another $5/month off your phone bill. Not bad. If you get an advanced version of DSL from SBC, you get up to 3 million bits per second (Mbps) download speed, which translates into about 0.375 megabytes per second under ideal circumstances; but this costs a few bucks extra per month and isn't worth it unless you download a LOT.

SETUP: A breeze! Just follow the instructions on the CD that comes with the DSL modem, and you'll be online in roughly 10 minutes. The way DSL modems work is: you get splitters/filters for up to six phone sockets. So the phone line is now split into a socket for your phone and a socket for a DSL modem cord. The DSL modem cord goes to your DSL modem. Then the ethernet cord goes from your DSL modem to your computer--OR if you have a wireless DSL modem, you won't even need the ethernet cord.

MAINTENANCE: Non-existent. Just leave the DSL modem on. DSL modem works with routers and switches that are widely available (think Best Buy). I have no problems using my D-LINK router with the DSL modem; in this way, through the router, my two computers share the DSL speed.

There has been just one outage in the last 2 months for me, and that was after a hailstorm in the L.A. area that the company was not prepared for. That knocked out service for about eight hours from noon-ish to 10 p.m.

Customer service was friendly but inefficient, and I'm a bit miffed that they strung me along for hours until I asked them point blank if there was an area outage or if it was just my DSL line. It was maddening to hear the guy tell me after checking that it was an area-wide problem, after I had spent an hour with him doing diagnostics on my modem because he thought maybe my DSL modem was defective.

HARDWARE: You can get either a "free" wired or wireless DSL modem (Speedstream 4100); the first costs $50 but you get a $50 mail-in-rebate. The second costs $100, or $50 after mail-in-rebate. I opted for the wired modem. The wired modem comes with a 6-foot ethernet cord as well, though you'll need another one to connect to your computer.

If you want to split up your DSL speed (so each computer gets a share of the DSL line) you will either need a router (see another one of my reviews for more information) or the wireless DSL modem and computers that can accept wireless signals.

SPEED: DSL advertised up to 384 kbps upload speed (like if you are SENDING an email attachment to someone) and up to 1.5 Mbps download speed (like if you are downloading a webpage or RECEIVING an email attachment from someone). I tested my modem several times (go to places like http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/) and get a very consistent speed rating of about 250 kbps upload and 1.2 Mbps download. Translated into more useful units, I get about 32 KB/s upload and 150 KB/s download. That means a 9 megabyte file takes just one minute to download, or about 25 times faster than dialup under real-life conditions.

UPTIME: Excellent. DSL rarely if ever goes down, making it good for gaming. Good ping times too (your results may vary, depending on where you live).

GOODIES: Quite frankly this is not much use if you already have your own software and email accounts, and even if you don't, you can get free versions of much of the following from Yahoo even if you aren't an SBC customer. But anyway, you get:

You get a pop-up blocker, 2 GB (that's 2,000 megabytes!) of email storage, a customized Yahoo page, online anti-virus and parental controls, anti-spam software for your email, and broadband access to Yahoo.com so you can do things like listen to online internet radio or movie clips.

You can have up to 10 sub-accounts for email, so one DSL account can service an entire family. Also, you get a "briefcase" (a web-based hard drive, sort of) up to 110 megabytes large.

PROS: Dial-up is slow and costs more than $15/month! Also, DSL speeds are stable and don't depend on how few or many neighbors have DSL. In contrast, cable modem has a fatal flaw in that there is only so much throughput for a neighborhood. If only one person in a neighborhood has cable modem, it's fast, but speeds slow down once more people around you get cable modem. Cable may be cheaper if you get a package rate with basic or premium cable and VOIP (internet-based phone service), but SBC has a deal with satellite dish companies so you can get a decent DSL satellite phone service combo.

CONS: The minimum contract period is for one year, sort of like a cell phone plan, so you're locked in. Switching phone companies is going to cost extra, maybe $35 or so, up front. The DSL modem costs at least $50 up front as well. Also, if you live more than 1000 feet from a SBC switch, you'll get subpar connection speed or DSL may not even be available in that area; go to sbc.yahoo.com and click till you see a "check availability" link to see for sure.

BOTTOM LINE: Cheap, 25 times faster than dial-up, good deal.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 14.95
Version Number or Year: 2005