AT&T@home is now AT&T Broadband Internet for everyone out here since @home went bankrupt. The service went out for a few days during the switchover, and after a few hiccups, it has resumed to its normal satisfying speed.

AT&T@home has one significant edge over PacBell/SBC DSL out here in Silicon Valley, in that they actually install the service soon after you order it.

Is AT&T@home Right for you?
We live in the Sunnyvale area, 94087 to be precise. Why am I sharing my zip code with you all? Because outages vary even across Sunnyvale. My friend in the 94086 area is having fewer outages than I.

It's a bad sign when a review of a high speed internet access provider starts with a description of outages.

Because we do live in Sunnyvale, we have the option of having either DSL or cable modem, or even both. We initially went with DSL back in September of 2000, but after several failed visits from the Pac Bell subcontractor, we gave up.

Failed DSL installations are legion out here. Our measly 6 month wait is no exception. Fact is, they stopped coming to our house a few months ago and have probably cancelled our order ticket without notifying us by now.

By November, we'd had enough of PacBell jerking us around and called AT&T@home. They were also giving 2 months free service with installation at the time.

The Ordering Experience
We had just moved in to our home a month before and still needed cable service for our TV as well. With that in mind, I asked the AT&T@home customer service representative if I could get some sort of package TV and ISP bundle.
Answer: "I'm sorry, but the cable TV service is a separate thing and you'd have to call another division to order it."

Fine. She offered to transfer me at the end of the call. The ordering process took a few minutes, and they scheduled a installation to come out 3 days later. YES!!! I was dancing with glee at such a speedy installtion date. (DSL will optimistically schedule an install 4 weeks after you place your order, and then send you flyers to keep delaying your appointment.)

(Of course, she didn't connect me to the cable TV service folks after the call.)

All told, we would pay $40 a month for the service, with the first 2 months free. Given that my parents were paying $15/month for 56K dialup, it still seemed like a bargain to me.

During the ordering process, you will be asked to select a login ID, so have something in mind as it will be your email address - ie, janedoe@home.com is probably taken, so you can get something like jane.doe@home or doe.j@home.com.

Installation
This was by far the most excellent part of the whole experience. Not only did the installation people arrive the appointed day, they also called ahead to ask if they could come early. YES!

They arrived in pairs (at one point there were 4 men at my house) and first climbed poles and checked wires. Later, they checked out our internal networking and replaced our splitters with better quality ones for us.

Next, they installed the AT&T@home proprietary software on my laptop and then proceeded to deal with my connection. They don't normally setup your mailbox for you, but these guys offered and I told them no.

Lastly, they checked to see that the service was up and the connection speed--a lightning fast 1.8 megabits* per second at that moment.

*Connection speed is measured in kilobits or megabits per second (kbps, or mbps) whereas file size is measured in kilobytes and megabytes (KB, or MB). 56 kilobits is actually equal to 7 kilobytes. That's why it takes longer thank you expect to download large data files despite your "fast connection".

The whole deal took under 2 hours. Those guys were my heroes.

Later that night, my husband came home and connected the TV. Yes, cable for our TV was working even though we hadn't ordered it.

Long Term Use
The first 4 months were ridiculous, with constant outages. I work at home in the mornings and I can tell you that I am denied service at least 3 times a week during that period.

These outages lasted sometimes half an hour, and other times 4 hours. Usually by the afternoon, everything is working again.

Only once have I experienced a mailhost error while the service was up and running.

I am pleased to report that the last 4 months have improved dramatically with very few outages!!! Service folks came on their own a couple times and replaced more cable lines.

Customer Service
The constant outages led me to call customer service several months. When you call the service line, you are first offered the option to listen to a list of the outage areas. Morbidly fascinated, I selected this option only to be inundated with numerous reports of outages all over the country. Strangely, my area wasn't listed.

That being the case, I then opted to speak to a customer service rep. I was actually only on hold for 5 minutes before a human being answered.

I explained that I was having regular outages (that week had been really bad with 4 mornings of outages) and she blithely explained I must be experience lag in the morning since everyone was online.

She must think I'm an idiot. Lag?!! I informed her that lag would not explain why the light on my cable modem was out. All of sudden she perked up and placed a service ticket for someone to drive out the next day to see what the problem was.

The House Call From Hell
This now bring me to my 2nd favorite rant (my favorite rant being about DSL) about their customer service and strongarm selling tactics.

The service guy looked at the line outside the house and then asked me if he could come inside the house to look at my cable modem.

He then looked at the patchpanel with some horror and made a quick call back to the office. "Does the customer at 123 Main St. subscribe to video service?" "Roger that, NO they don't."

"Ma'am, I'm going to need to rip up your patchpanel and disconnect your video line."

"The hell you will."

Now, we all know they expect us to only have 1 computer accessing their cable modem. While we usually have 3 computers going at any given time, there's usually only 1 concurrent user.

AT&T@home expects you to run the cable line directly into your home, connected to only one PC. This is Silicon Valley...who doesn't have a hub in their house??

Now the service guy was willing to overlook the patchpanel and hub, but only if I subscribed also to their cable TV service.

I was infuriated. I had attempted to order it but the customer rep couldn't offer me the service. I was never informed that if I ordered a cable modem I would then be also forced to order the cable TV service.

After a long altercation, where he explained that both signals (TV and modem) travel down the same cable wire and because I have a the cable line hooking into my patch panel, I'm getting the signal throughout my home. Somehow, this warrants me paying $90 a month rather than $40 a month.

He further explained that if another service person came out and found the situation wasn't corrected, they would cut the cable line and I would be barred from service in the future. Me...upstanding citizen, blackballed by AT&T.

Since he also assured me that he would install a repeater to magnify the signal and improve my TV reception (we have lousy reception of NBC, CBS and Fox), I agreed to order the cable TV service too.

Guess what? After all that, he ended up blowing me off twice for our appointments and I still only pay for cable modem service.

Oh yeah, he never fixed my cable modem. That's probably because the equipment failure was on their end and not mine.

In Conclusion
Quick ordering, quick installation, regular outages, and the perception of quick service only to become an in-house audit. The installation will leave proprietary software on your computer, and the speed deteriorates over time (we now get about 700kbs). You can get an good email address like johnqpublic@home.com, and the mailbox is very easy to setup.

If you live in an area where they have updated the equipment and you have high quality cables installed, you could end up with a reliable high speed internet connection.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): $40/mo.