[lug] Advice for a incoming Colorado newbie

[Lynn Danielson]

Michael Deck wrote:

> Nate Duehr wrote:
>
>> For DSL and Cable both, ask for the current phone number of the house 
>> when you
>> get to a point where you've found something interesting enough to 
>> pursue and
>> then go put that phone number in the locators for both types of 
>> service and
>> see if they think you have service at that location.
>
>
> That's not an absolute guarantee, unfortunately. I've had both kinds 
> of problem with this: the locator says service is available, guy comes 
> to the site and finds no service; and locator says service is 
> unavailable or costs lotsa extra bux, guy comes to the site and says 
> no problem. The fine print on most of the locator pages is that 
> they'll refund your money if it turns out you can't actually get 
> service. For a while in my neighborhood, there wasn't actually enough 
> copper to supply DSL or ISDN to everyone, even though the locator said 
> service was available. 


Older neighborhoods, especially condo developments can have load coils
(low pass filters) and/or t-bridges installed.  Either can ruin DSL 
connections
for a housing area that should otherwise have service.  The Qwest 
locator web
page won't give you any info on this, but you should be able to talk to 
a Qwest
representative and have them test a phone number to see if it's DSL 
capable. 
Even then, Qwest won't guarantee service, but it should be a better 
indicator
than the web page locator alone.

Qwest is not usually willing to remove these hinderences on their own.
Some of the alternative dsl providers (Rhythms for example) used to force
Qwest to remove such obsticals, but most (all?) of these companies are now
history.  Another suggestion I've heard is to subscribe to ISDN service.
Since it's a more expensive service Qwest may be more inclined to make
the necessary changes to the lines.  Once the changes have been made, drop
ISDN for DSL.  Assuming that you're close enough to a C.O. to get it.

Lynn