I Changed Internet Providers

[easysurfer]

I finally decided to pull the trigger and changed my internet provider from the very basic ATT DSL to faster (and hopefully more reliable) Comcast Internet. I got internet only as I'm still sticking with OTA TV.

I'll miss the $20/month rate I was getting for the basic DSL for about the last 15 years, but it'll be great to actually view something on Amazon Prime and Youtube and not have to quit cause of just stopping or constantly buffering. With Comcast I got their Economy Plus plan which is $19.95/month for the first year, then will go up to about 29.95 - 39.95 month.

The Cable Guy (sounds like a movie) is gonna do the install on Sunday, 6/1.

Of course, I could have just upgraded to U-Verse and kept my email. But that would've been too easy, plus I have an ax to grind

The irony is that over the last couple of weeks, my spotty DSL service actually has been staying on most of the time.

 

[gauss]

When I went from spotty DSL to Cable Internet, the only thing that I missed (other than the low monthly cost), was the fact that the Cable Internet would go down during power outages.

I have my own small generator, so in the past with DSL, I could "keep on surfin'" until the power came back on (often 24+ hours later). With Cable, the Internet went down when the power went down, or shortly (ie a couple of hours) thereafter.

-gauss

 

[easysurfer]

Good point. I didn't even consider the power outage with Cable.

But with DSL, didn't you need some sort of back up power anyhow to run your PC and DSL modem when the power went out?

 

[Mulligan]

I finally decided to pull the trigger and changed my internet provider from the very basic ATT DSL to faster (and hopefully more reliable) Comcast Internet. I got internet only as I'm still sticking with OTA TV.



I'll miss the $20/month rate I was getting for the basic DSL for about the last 15 years, but it'll be great to actually view something on Amazon Prime and Youtube and not have to quit cause of just stopping or constantly buffering. With Comcast I got their Economy Plus plan which is $19.95/month for the first year, then will go up to about 29.95 - 39.95 month.



The Cable Guy (sounds like a movie) is gonna do the install on Sunday, 6/1.



Of course, I could have just upgraded to U-Verse and kept my email. But that would've been too easy, plus I have an ax to grind



The irony is that over the last couple of weeks, my spotty DSL service actually has been staying on most of the time.

Easy, you alluded to something that bothers me if I were ever to do the same thing. I assume you have an ATT or Yahoo email account. Do they drop your email account then if you switch? I worry it will be a major PIA to switch all of them with my various accounts.


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[imoldernu]

Comcast will be the best internet provider.

Comcast will be the only internet provider.

 

[easysurfer]

Easy, you alluded to something that bothers me if I were ever to do the same thing. I assume you have an ATT or Yahoo email account. Do they drop your email account then if you switch? I worry it will be a major PIA to switch all of them with my various accounts.


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I'm not taking any chances and am going to not use the ATT/Yahoo email account. For that very reason, I've procrastinated for years as I have hundreds of accounts that use those emails. I'll probably have to keep my DSL account open for a month just to get the new email updated.

Now I'm considering whether I should use an email (such as Google or aol) no tied to a provider as my primary email. I probably won't. That'll be too easy

 

[bjorn2bwild]

I assume you have an ATT or Yahoo email account. Do they drop your email account then if you switch?

When I last moved, I switched from a SBC/Yahoo service to an ATT/yahoo service - different phone #, account and e-mail address.
That was more than 5 years ago - my previous SBC/Yahoo e-mail works just fine.

 

[mpeirce]

Good point. I didn't even consider the power outage with Cable.

At least at my house, when the power goes down, the cable doesn't actually go dead. The cable modem will if it uses plain house power, but if you add a small UPS for it the connection will stay up.

It's kind of fun to use the MacBook or iPad when the power is out.

Of course the uptime is limited by the UPS life. Most power interruptions are brief and this works fine.

 

[mpeirce]

Easy, you alluded to something that bothers me if I were ever to do the same thing. I assume you have an ATT or Yahoo email account. Do they drop your email account then if you switch? I worry it will be a major PIA to switch all of them with my various accounts.

As a general rule people shouldn't use their ISP's email accounts. If you ever switch ISPs (are you ever going to move?) you will need to change your email. Often at a inopportune time (who's not busy when you are moving!).

There are lots of options for fairly permanent email addresses: gmail, yahoo, etc.

Even if you are using an ISP's email consider changing it sooner rather than waiting until you have to. That allows you to have a longer transition time.

 

[Alan]

Good point. I didn't even consider the power outage with Cable.

But with DSL, didn't you need some sort of back up power anyhow to run your PC and DSL modem when the power went out?

A couple of years ago our U-Verse router went out and the AT&T guy came out and replaced the router and also put a UPS between the router and power outlet. Since we both use laptops and/our iPad/iPod's then during the many power outages we have had since then we have never lost connection with the internet. Christmas before last we lost power for several hours, but the internet stayed up all that time as did our laptops/iPads. Turkey had to be thrown out though

 

[gauss]

Alan,

Are your power outages more than 5 hours? If U-verse is doing something different in terms of powering their servers/head-end then my cable company is doing, then this might be something I would like to investigate further.

During the 2 power outages since I switched to cable, the Internet either worked for ~ 2 hours or stopped immediately. Each of these outages was at least eight hours.

I use a portable generator to power my home equipment. It is the ISP's equipment on their end that has gone down due to the power outage.

-gauss

 

[easysurfer]

As others have mentioned, may not be the best route, but I'm going ahead with using the new ISP email as my primary emails. Already got most of the accounts that start with "A" changed over. It's a bit tedious, but not as bad as I thought...at least for now.

I do have battery backup for power outages. But won't plan to use that for long during a power outage. Mainly, it's to not fully crash like during a summer storm.

 

[Alan]

Alan,

Are your power outages more than 5 hours? If U-verse is doing something different in terms of powering their servers/head-end then my cable company is doing, then this might be something I would like to investigate further.

During the 2 power outages since I switched to cable, the Internet either worked for ~ 2 hours or stopped immediately. Each of these outages was at least eight hours.

I use a portable generator to power my home equipment. It is the ISP's equipment on their end that has gone down due to the power outage.

-gauss

Only the outage of Christmas Day, 2012, was 5 hours. The rest are usually under 1 hour, with occasional ones over 1 hour.

 

[Mulligan]

As a general rule people shouldn't use their ISP's email accounts. If you ever switch ISPs (are you ever going to move?) you will need to change your email. Often at a inopportune time (who's not busy when you are moving!).

There are lots of options for fairly permanent email addresses: gmail, yahoo, etc.

Even if you are using an ISP's email consider changing it sooner rather than waiting until you have to. That allows you to have a longer transition time.

I wish I hadn't, but when I first set it up, I didn't know what I was doing. It has been the only email I have ever had. In fact it wasn't until a couple years ago, I even knew it was actually tethered to my internet provider. I just thought it was a free service like Hotmail was.


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[bjorn2bwild]

If it is a bundled Yahoo DSL service the e-mail is provided by Yahoo and will continue to work after the service is cancelled -
e.g. - xxx@att.net + password typed into the Yahoo mail sign in page. The att.net and sbcglobal.net are valid Yahoo ID's.

 

[Mulligan]

If it is a bundled Yahoo DSL service the e-mail is provided by Yahoo and will continue to work after the service is cancelled -
e.g. - xxx@att.net + password typed into the Yahoo mail sign in page. The att.net and sbcglobal.net are valid Yahoo ID's.

Mine is sbcglobal.net .... Are you saying mine is unconnected? It seems like I signed through Yahoo many years ago, but then it seemed to get intertwined with ATT. As I use my email address to get to my ATT bill account. The fine print seems to make me believe it was connected but there are so many variables it was hard to figure for sure.


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[easysurfer]

I got about 97% of my accounts changed to my new email. There are a few holdouts like the sites having issues. I probably could have kept the old email as that is a Yahoo/ATT type. This brings back a memory when I had a friend who had a habit of switching internet providers.

One time she switched away from Comcast to ATT and didn't have access to her email (because of forgotten password). The Comcast person tried to tell her that in order to get her emails, she had to go back to Comcast. Which actually was not true. I can't recall exactly what we did, but eventually she did still have the email reactivated.

I suppose, if it is regular practice to deactivate emails for every person that switches, that'll be a headache to manage on their end so probably a whole lot easier to just leave that alone.

Also, the question comes of who owns the contents of the emails? The person or the ISP?

 

[Alan]

Mine is sbcglobal.net .... Are you saying mine is unconnected? It seems like I signed through Yahoo many years ago, but then it seemed to get intertwined with ATT. As I use my email address to get to my ATT bill account. The fine print seems to make me believe it was connected but there are so many variables it was hard to figure for sure.


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DW's email account is also @sbcglobal.net which she signed up to through Yahoo many years ago and it followed her to ATT when we signed up to ATT DSL and later to ATT U-Verse. At least that is how I remember it. I signed up with GMail shortly after it was launched.

 

[easysurfer]

Mine is sbcglobal.net .... Are you saying mine is unconnected? It seems like I signed through Yahoo many years ago, but then it seemed to get intertwined with ATT. As I use my email address to get to my ATT bill account. The fine print seems to make me believe it was connected but there are so many variables it was hard to figure for sure.


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The Yahoo email account intertwined with ATT is what I hated about the setup.

For example, recently I added a screen name, but that wasn't an intuitive process. If I only had a Yahoo account then probably I could add the screen name though Yahoo's email sign in screen? But instead I had to go the ATT's portal which as their own ID. From there I ended up spinning my wheels in various Help pages only find one that was out of date. Eventually, the way I had the user added was to talk via live chat with someone at ATT. Ended up the key was to enter the primary email instead of the ATT ID, then that brings up a user maintenance screen. But no where are there instructions to do that.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

Mine is sbcglobal.net .... Are you saying mine is unconnected? It seems like I signed through Yahoo many years ago, but then it seemed to get intertwined with ATT. As I use my email address to get to my ATT bill account. The fine print seems to make me believe it was connected but there are so many variables it was hard to figure for sure.

As I stated in my first comment, after cancelling my SBC/Yahoo service, the e-mail account stayed active. I just type - 'bjorn@sbcglobal.net' into the Yahoo sign in page. The e-mail skin is the same as my att.net account - different than a regular Yahoo account.
I might live in a parallel U verse, but that is how it works for me.

 

[Mulligan]

DW's email account is also @sbcglobal.net which she signed up to through Yahoo many years ago and it followed her to ATT when we signed up to ATT DSL and later to ATT U-Verse. At least that is how I remember it. I signed up with GMail shortly after it was launched.

That is the path I have followed but I am still stuck at the low speed DSL. U-Verse hasn't made it to my immediate neighborhood for some reason.
Bjorn... I hope the same applies to me if I ever find an upgrade. As I am sure I will forget to change one of my accounts if I ever change ISP.


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[gardenfun]

Here is my cautionary tale about relying on the old telco email addresses:

I have had a pacbell.net email address for 18 years. It was the first email address I had aside from Prodigy--remember them?

I believe it was associated with plain old ATT long distance at the time--ATT DSL didn't exist then. Along the way, Pacific Bell (which became SBC then back to ATT!) hooked up with Yahoo to deliver the email.

I have long since abandoned ATT landline and DSL. So the pacbell email address wasn't associated with any ATT account. Whenever I had to change my password, it was a pain to find out where to do that on the att.net website.

Last month I was denied access to my email--the message was to go to the website and change my password. I knew from previous experience that I eventually had to call a service rep. Sure enough, when trying to change my password, I had to call.

the service rep had to call technical assistance and they said I couldn't change my password because I hadn't set up "security questions". Heck, there were no security questions in 1996!

So essentially I was frozen out of my pacbell email, which I had only been using for every single banking, retail, etc. account. The rep told me that they had basically been freezing out the so-called "free" legacy email accounts from the old Bell operating companies (Pacific Bell, Ameritech, etc.). I think if I had still had an ATT service they would have let me change my password.

So just a caution to make sure you have some sort of backup system to those old telco email accounts, if they are no longer associated with an ATT service.

What a pain to change emails in all those places, including early-retirement.org!

 

[easysurfer]

Comcast went ahead and install my internet this afternoon. After some delays, I'm up and running. I only got the lowest level (after speed testing, got a bit over 3MB download). In comparision to what I had, this feels like a sports car.

The biggest delay was him trying to find where is the box in the building (condo) for the cable connections and then trying to open that box, which took about an hour.

I tried cancelling my DSL service from ATT but on Sunday, they are pretty much unavailable. Kinda crazy. I'll have to call during weekday hours.

 

[Animorph]

After a bad email switch I picked up my own domain name and a hosting service for my own email. My email addresses are owned by me and I can move to different host services as needed. Way less than $50/year if you just get the basics.

 

[Rustward]

<snip>With Cable, the Internet went down when the power went down, or shortly (ie a couple of hours) thereafter.

-gauss

This was over ten years ago and it may be better now, but back then I discovered that the local cable company was using little consumer-style UPS systems like you buy for your home computer for their amplifiers in the field. So after a power outage anywhere between here and the head-end, we still had service until the little UPS batteries drained, which was roughly between one and two hours.

I thought it was quite humorous, having a "data center" background and having been exposed to real UPSs, motor-generators that produce really clean DC power, and diesel generators that automatically start within 20 seconds of a utility outage.