Avon’s Internet Service
Written: Jan 25 '02 (Updated Jan 26 '02)
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Avon is best known for cosmetics, but little known as a dial-up ISP with coverage nationwide. Avon.net doesn’t actually lease phone lines and operate huge modem banks in cities across the country; rather, Avon, among others, is an affiliate to one of the large national carriers (backbone) such as UU.net, or Level3.net. As an affiliate, Avon could provide nationwide dialup service, set pricing, offer ancillary tech support and customer service, all without incurring huge infrastructure costs. As far as Internet quality, that depended on the backbone. Depending on geographic location, subscribers to Avon.net dialup service could switch between one or more backbones by dialing a different access number.
In terms of pricing and customer support, Avon was among those rated highly by www.freedomlist.com until recently. Their pricing plan was $9.95 a month unlimited hours; but sadly, they raised it to $12.95 last month. I was on this service for two months before I cancelled via phone. The quality of the backbone I choose, UU.net was not terrific, I could dial in with no busy signals, but the speed of UU.net was overall sluggish. I also tried some of the Level3.net numbers, and those were a teensy bit faster, but not much (NetZero is on Level3.net, so you can find out for yourself with their free dialer).
Setup is simple, instructions are available at Avon.net’s homepage at http://home.avon.net where you can download an Avon modem dialer that takes care of the network settings for you, or order a free CD by mail to install at home. The Avon homepage is pretty informative too, spelling out which networks, access numbers, and make/model of modems available in your geographic area, as well as access your account. As part of the monthly contract, you get one avon.net email address. Billing is via email, and they accept only credit cards. Sadly, when they raised prices, they didn’t bother to inform anyone beforehand.
Recommended:
Yes
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