No Daily Brief, blame AT&T

On November 14, AT&T ended DSL service in my neighborhood and tried to force me onto U-Verse. I think they're eliminating old-school DSL in an effort to save costs and consolidate resources. A blog in Nevada describes the same letter I received about the change last month:

Some AT&T customers in Grass Valley have just received a form letter indicating they are being involuntarily switched to U-verse High-Speed Internet effective Wednesday, August 15, 2012. If a customer has been thinking of switching AT&T DSL Internet service to a local or regional DSL provider, it must be done within the next few weeks. Other areas are, most likely, soon to follow. Coupled with AT&T’s new pricing for limited bandwidth, the end result will be higher pricing without the ability to switch.
In AT&T’s Grass Valley mailing, they write “If we don’t hear from you by Wednesday, August 15, 2012, as a reminder, your service will be temporarily suspended until you contact us.” In addition, AT&T writes, “If you have phone service that depends upon your high speed Internet line (i.e. Voice over IP), this means that you’ll experience an interruption of your voice service – including 911 emergency services.” 

After debating awhile, I decided not to go with U-Verse because 1) I think AT&T should have done fiber right and brought it to my door like Verizon does, and 2) it's not as cost-competitive as Time Warner cable, and 3) I resent the fact the fact that AT&T is killing my trusty if poky 2mb/s DSL line that I've had since 2003.

Since my internet went down, I've been attempting to get all my business done on my 4G LTE phone with the hotspot feature, and I've had mixed results. The service cuts out for some reason.

It's kind of hard to do a Daily Brief without a solid internet connection, so blame AT&T for this one.


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