Review by NormanS 
UPDATED: 1.6 years ago
member for 8.7 years, 2631 visits, last login: a few minutes ago
 San Jose,Santa Clara,CA
 $30 per month
 about 7 days
 SBC
 "DSL support is very good. POTS is pretty good."
 "NNTP service is mediocre. Email service is only as good as Yahoo! Mail Plus."
 "Still needs improvment."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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When I started, the name of the service was, "Pacific Bell DSL", which was allowed by SBC, even though they were the parent company. Seven years, and some changes later, the service is now called, "at&t Yahoo! HSI"; a legacy of the outsourcing contract between SBC and Yahoo! (BTW, the name change from "SBC" to "AT&T" reflects a corporate decision by the SBC managment team after they bought AT&T. The "new" AT&T is just the old SBC re-branded.)
Recent changes were made by Yahoo! to the way they hand email through their SMTP Message Submission servers. These changes were made unilaterally, and without prior notice to AT&T, leaving AT&T CSRs to field customer calls when things broke for the customers. These changes pretty much make their message submission servers useless for power users. I am reasonably sure that most ISPs don't force this limitation on their customers. Basically, using an email address different that the account requires prior "verification" with Yahoo! to avoid an SMTP error where email using that as the "From:" address being rejected.
As a result, I have downgraded my opinion of the quality of the services. I probably should have downgraded the "Tech Support" rating earlier, as well; primarily because deciding whether to take troubleto Yahoo!, or to AT&T, can be confusing. Technically, the DSL connecting (AT&T support) is fairly good. However, Yahoo! support for their Internet services is somewhat lacking.
Wish: That AT&T would reconsider their outsourcing conract with Yahoo!.
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Pacific Bell - SBC
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