Tonly lives in a deluxe condo building in the sky. Unfortunately for him, high-density urban living and AT&T DSL don’t mix. He waited three months for sweet, sweet Internet access because, as AT&T explained, all of the ports for the building were full. Just a few months later, his access cut out for no clear reason. The most logical explanation is that the line to his condo was switched off by mistake during another customer’s install. Easy enough to fix, isn’t it? But Tony owns his modem, and AT&T is using that as an excuse not to fix the problem.

Our condo building is under an exclusive AT&T contract (whatever that means), I also live too high up for a broadband card to be effective, so my option for Internet is limited. When I placed an order for DSL Xtreme 6.0, I had to wait 3 months for the order to go through because all “ports were full” in our building. This was found out after a week of repeated calls to AT&T, until someone technical-savvy enough finally told us this, and suggested (off the record) for us to get Internet elsewhere, because there was nothing they could do.

We were happy when a port finally freed up and we got a DSL connection, at least for the next couple months. Today, out of the blue, the DSL connection disappeared again. I’m pretty sure a AT&T tech accidentally switched off our apartment since there is a lot of moving in and outs, and nothing changed on my end. However I can’t get AT&T to send out a tech to check our line. I’ve called support several times, and each time the conversation included the CSR telling me they could not diagnose a “3rd party modem,” attempting to peddle me a $100 AT&T modem, and offering a fee-based diagnostic service for my 3rd party modem that ranged well beyond $100+.

I guess I’m stuck without Internet, until I can afford to move somewhere else, or flag down the AT&T tech when he comes on his next round of installations.

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