Musings of a West Texas Business Venture

New Edge Networks

Several weeks ago, I wrote about some of our ongoing experiences with at&t / SBC. The series of incidents left us unhappy with them (they actually are trying to bill us for being down for 5 days), and we decided to go looking for a better Internet service provider.

After a few weeks of calling around and discovering our options (we called SuddenLink, at&t [just to be thorough], SpeakEasy, NTS Communications, and Xanadoo), we settled on New Edge Networks, who claimed to be able to bring us a 1.1/1.1Mbps (roughly 137.5K / sec up AND down) SDSL line. In fact, we could get up to 2.3/2.3Mbps (287K / sec !!!).

They sent me their SLA, and we started the sign up process. David, our account representative, claimed that they should be able to get the install done in just a few weeks.

I paid for a few extra IP addresses to ensure that we'd be OK in the future, and we waited, getting updates from New Edge Networks as the installation process went forward (line was installed, then provisioned, etc....). Last Thursday, our installer showed up, and actually setup the router. Which is when things got interesting......

He asked me to sign off on the paperwork.
I asked "Does it work?".
He said "Yes, of course."
The moment I signed the papers, he exclaimed, "Oh, I am supposed to tell you, the setup was for 1.1/1.1, but we couldn't get it to sync any faster than 400/400K. I hope that's OK."
I didn't really know what to say, other than "No."

He claimed to be only the "install guy", and that I'd need to call New Edge Network to get them to fix it. Lovely. David gave me a status update on Friday and there is an open ticket with the telco (at&t): Until the ticket is resolved 400/400 is the fastest that New Edge would be able to do.

Apparently, we're almost 15,400 feet away from the Point Of Presence. To get 1.1/1.1Mbps, we must be closer than 7500 feet (that's about 1.5 miles). To get 768/768Kbps, we must be closer than 15,000 feet (that's about 3 miles). SBC / at&t can get us 2.8Mbps down, and 500Kbps up without any problems.

If they are able to fix it, we'll be great.
If they are not, we'll be looking for another provider.

Again.

posted by Anthony Presley @ 7:29 PM