brian baggett dot com

For all the years I’ve had high-speed Internet access, I’ve never had DSL*. I’ve had ISDN, dial-up, and cable modem (Time Warner, DirecPath, and Time Warner Comcast), but my biggest impediments to DSL were that it was either it was unavailable where I lived or that BellSouth AT&T wouldn’t sell it unbundled from phone service. Now that they have to, I’ve decided to get the 6 Mbps down / 512k up DSL Xtreme service they offer. This was motivated by my desire to rid myself of my TV/Internet provider DirecPath.

DirecPath, a DirecTV provider for apartments, condos, etc., provides horrible service at high prices. My $40 a month cable modem through DirecPath gets me 2783 kbps (347.9 KB/sec transfer rate) down and an upload Speed of 445 kbps (55.6 KB/sec transfer rate). Obviously, this isn’t great.

Despite this, I never really considered ditching them until the TV service began to suck. Over the last few months, I’ve been mistakenly disconnected for stealing television service despite not stealing anything, paying ~$100 a month, and never missing a payment and still it took them days to reconnect it. They sell me an HD receiver and charge me $10 extra month for HD service with the promise of all of DirecTV’s HD channels but neglect to mention that the outdated 3-LNB dish they installed on the property can’t get them and their 5-LNB dish upgrade will happen “soon”. TNT in high-def isn’t worth $10 a month … which is pretty much all I can get now that HDnet Movies and the Universal HD channels are “premium” channels. They can’t even put an antenna on-site for me to get my locals in HD. I also get a bill from DirecPath that’s inconsistent and they cause DirecTV to change my channel lineup to a lower tier without telling me just about every month. To be fair, every cable provider sucks but DirecPath sucked when it was MediaWorks and it sucks now too. I just don’t watch enough TV to justify the $60+ a month I’m spending on this. Despite this, if MediaWorks had simply put the 5-LNB dish on the property, I would’ve grudgingly given them this money indefinitely. I can watch movies (and many TV shows) through my Netflix subscription and I can watch TV shows legally on network websites or quasi-legally through things like OpenHULU or illegally via Miro + tvrss.net.

My install kit is supposed to arrive by Friday, so let’s hope this goes off without a hitch and I can give them the boot. I wouldn’t be opposed to getting DirecTV again when Wendie and I get our house, though who knows? Maybe I won’t even miss it.

*I’ve had DSL in corporate apartments, but I’ve never personally paid for it.

UPDATE: I’ve gotten lots of feedback since this post went up last year by people who hate DirecPath. Apparently they are capable of better service in some cases. Paul Stamatiou got Internet service with them and thinks they’re just great. To be fair, he is inside the perimeter and I was out in the burbs but our experiences were night and day.