Cox or Quest?

Tue, 2 Oct 2001 07:02:57 -0700

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Note that with Qwest there are 2 parts, the dsl connection and the ISP.
When I initially got Qwest (over a year ago - since Mar 2000) I went with
them for both.  It is true that the ISP part (qwest.net) is switching
over to MSN.  I've not seen any official announcement from them to
qwest.net subscribers about what the conversion will entail (I've had
to hear about it second hand).  Our last phone bill had an ad on the
back of the envelope about MSN.  There is also stuff on the Qwest site
about it.

I've not had much trouble with the service.  The occasional interruption
but nothing major.

There are 30+ other ISPs that you can use:

    http://www.qwest.com/dsl/learn/isplist.html#arizona

I've been quite busy with work but have been as active as possible in
searching for another ISP.  Right now, out of the list provided at
the above URL I've narrowed down my search to about 5 either based on
price, their speed and quality of any questions I've sent them (i.e.,
do they answer my questions or provide marketing crap), and my gut
feelings.  All communication at this point has been via email.  I need
to follow-up with each by phone to ask some more questions and see
what kind of a feel I get from talking with them.

To help possibly save you from having to look through all 30+, here's
those 5 so far starting with what I feel to be the most likely candidate
for me down to the least likely:

  1. FastQ Communications
     http://www.fastq.com/connect/dsl.html
     Recommendation from "Mark R. Myers" <nx54@home.com> on this list

  2. Cybertrails
     http://www.cybertrails.com/dsl/dsl_phoenix.html
     I sent a question by email on Aug 12, "Jake T via RT"
      <dslsales@support.cybertrails.com> responded with a good
      answer on Aug 13.

  3. RMC Internet Services
     http://www.rmci.net
     Purely a price thing.

  4. Opus One
     http://www.opus1.com/o/internet.html
     This one was at #2.  I sent a note on Sep 5 (sales@Opus1.COM)
      and got an excellent response on Sep 7 from "Joel Snyder"
      <Joel.Snyder@Opus1.COM>.  I found out from Joel that for a pure
      residential DSL that Sonora Communications handles their service
      and he referred me to gcooper@sonoracomm.com/jcooper@sonoracomm.com
      and also cc'd them on his response.  I contacted them both on
      Sep 6 (note, even though they were cc'd, I had to contact them the
      next day).

      Enter the marketing crap.  I had gone to the Sonora site and
      looked at their PDF of prices.  So I included questions about that
      and a couple of other questions verifying what Joel had told me.
      "Gene Cooper" <gcooper@SonoraComm.COM> replied and provided one
      new bit of information.  The rest was marketing crap.  I had to respo=
nd
      and ask the questions again.  Because of this they dropped from #2
      to #4.

  5. Digital Frontier Access
     http://www.digitalf.com
     I was excited because right on their web site they state

       "We love Linux & FreeBSD  and GNU products in general."

     I wrote to ask them some questions on Aug 12.  I have yet to receive
     a reply.

I hope this helps.
Dan

Victor Odhner (vodhner@home.com) wrote:
> Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 22:56:45 -0700
> From: "Victor Odhner" <vodhner@home.com>
> Sender: plug-discuss-admin@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; I)
> Subject: Re: Cox or Quest?
> Reply-To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> Lines: 32
>=20
> Chris Cowan wrote:
> > I'm moving to a new apartment and I have the choice between Cox or Quest
> > for my internet access. Any opinions on which one I should go with?
>=20
> I heard that Qwest is switching all their clients over to MSN
> as their Internet Service Provider.  They were going to delay
> this for Mac users, but there was no mention of Linux users.
> I may have this all wrong, but it's something to check into.
>=20
> I have been happy with Cox in Northeast Phoenix.  The ISP is
> Excite@Home, which lost some of my email when I first started
> with Cox about a year ago.  But I've not been aware of any
> real problems recently.  Download speeds are very good.
> Upload speeds are not something I'm sensitive to.
>=20
> Excite@Home appears to be going bankrupt or changing hands,
> and we don't know what disruptions users might see when a
> new owner (possibly AT&T) takes over.
>=20
> Play the competition and see what kind of deal you can squeeze
> out of them.
>=20
> Good luck.
>=20
> Vic
> ________________________________________________
> See http://PLUG.phoenix.az.us/navigator-mail.shtml if your mail doesn't p=
ost to the list quickly and you use Netscape to write mail.
>=20
> PLUG-discuss mailing list  -  PLUG-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>=20

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