Technology
AT&T Yahoo DSL Review
I signed up with SBC Yahoo DSL Express for $14.99 a month in October, 2005. In a few days, I got a modem and a CD with instructions on them on how to set it up.
Setup: Setup was a breeze. The instructions were fairly easy to follow. I was up and surfing in a matter of minutes. What seemed odd to me was that I needed to leave the modem on for ten days in order to maximize the speeds. I guess I will need to brush up on how these new modems work. The first modem I used needed a dialler, or else you had to send the AT commands through the serial port yourself. It was a Hayes 2400. And the last modem I used in the Philippines still used the dialler on Windows 2000, except it dialled 0.
Speeds: SBC claimed a maximum of 1.5Mbps download speed. Almost weekly, I was running tests speed tests using 2wire.com, DSLReports, bandwidthplace.com, and CNet. I was consistently getting anywhere between 1.1Mbps to 1.45Mbps, close enough to their claimed maximum speeds. Incidentally, bandwidthplace.com only allows you to test three times a month. I wonder why.
My wife and I use the Internet mostly for email and surfing the web. I rarely download music, but I do sometimes watch videos. We tried VoIP once using Yahoo Messenger, but the parties on the other end were on dial-up. So we were satisfied with the performance. Videos loaded up pretty quickly. There was a short wait while it was buffering. Pages and images loaded pretty quickly.
Uploading pictures were likewise relatively fast. My wife loves to share our daughter's photos. 20 1600x1200 pictures uploaded to Yahoo Photos in a few minutes.
Even when there were two of us using the line at the same time, there weren't any noticeable performance degradation.
Upgrading to Pro
SBC merged with AT&T, and between March and May, they were offering me an upgrade to AT&T Yahoo DSL Pro for $17.99. In the beginning, I declined, thinking that 1.5Mbps was enough for us. But with their offer in their emailed newsletter in May, I thought that for three dollars more, I could get up to twice the download speed and twice the upload speed. So I signed up for another year on AT&T Yahoo DSL Pro, for a theoretical 3Mbps throughput.
Getting the Upgrade: It was really easy. I just clicked on the link from their newsletter, which took me to the AT&T website, and from there, ordered the upgrade. In three days, I was notified that the upgrade was completed. Again, one of the instructions was to leave the modem on for 10 days, and so I did.
Speeds: 10 days later, I was still getting between 1.2Mbps to 1.45Mbps. Nothing has changed.
Getting Help: First, I tried their on-line help, which didn't have any information on my problem. So I tried their email support. I am assuming AT&T's email support is automated. I got a canned response based on the choices I made in their email form, and probably some keywords. Basically, the reply was about not being able to connect. It told me to check my modem, check my phone line, my network settings, etc. But that was not my problem. I could connect. I could still surf, just not at the speeds they claim that I can.
I called their Tech Support and explained the problem. I asked to verify whether my plan has indeed been upgraded and the support rep said yes. I told them I have been using the same test sites, as well as the speed test on the AT&T Yahoo help site, and was still getting less than 1.5Mbps. I was put on hold for some time, in which I assume she was looking through their knowledge base. At the end of the call, she promised to escalate it to their second level of support, and that I would be contacted in 24 hours.
Resolution: True enough, someone did call me in a few hours. I again explained the problem, and he already knew how to resolve it. He did ask if the modem was on. Luckily I left it on. I suppose they have a tool to communicate with the modem and change some settings to allow higher speeds. Now I'm really curious about these new modems.
I ran some tests again, and this time I was getting 2.2Mbps to 2.9Mbps using the above test sites, as well as SpeakEasy.net, which also tests upload speeds. Sometimes download speeds go back down to 1.0Mbps, but I suppose those are during peak hours or when there's heavy traffic.
There wasn't much noticeable difference in uploading, though I was getting 420 to 480kbps on the upload tests.
Conclusion: So is AT&T Yahoo DSL Pro worth the $17.99 plus extras? For me, it's not. Right now, AT&T Yahoo DSL Express is at $12.99. And if you're not using VoIP or downloading music all day, the $12.99 promo price is good enough.
This article was originally written in November 2005 and updated in May 2006. As of November 2007, AT&T Yahoo! DSL Express is offered at $14.99 a month, while Comcast is offering 19.95 a month for six months for current Comcast subscribers when they order both phone and broadband service.