Verizon quotes $420 in setup fees for business DSL, and that doesn't include the actual DSL
Think you have it bad as a residential customer? Businesses get it much worse.
I posted a while back about getting WiFi from my home to my office. It's not going well, even with a directional antenna from MacWireless.com to replace my homebrewed cruft. So I decided to call Verizon and get DSL hooked up in the small, 350 square ft. office unit. Verizon, however, doesn't really want my business, describing a host of setup fees, contingency fees and high prices that could result in a $470 bill, plus taxes and fees, in my first month.
Read on for the breakdown, as explained to me by an otherwise very helpful and friendly CSR.
• The cheapest decent dry loop DSL plan (i.e. no phone service) is $50 a month for 3 Mbps. There's a $40 a month plan, but it means dropping to 768 Kbps/128 Kbps. I have no problem with this cost, it's the part I expected.
• There is an unwavable $100 setup up fee. Fine.
• I have to buy a $100 modem from them. At first it was $80, but the CSR realized during our chat that dry loop DSL apparently mandates a particular model. Grumble, but still fine.
• There is a $120 charge for the installer to verify that the service works. Getting uncomfortable by this point.
• There is a $200 further charge if the installer must verify the line quality from demarc box to office unit. That such a fee may exist is reasonable, because Verizon isn't responsible for the office building's interior wiring, but its size seems excessive: that's a total of $320 for post-installation line testing on top of the basic $100 installation fee.
One problem is that I just can't afford to throw away $420 in possible setup fees for the sake of basic 3Mbps DSL. The bigger problem, though, is that after signing the lease on a $350-a-month office unit—my quiet space to my work out of my home—I don't know if I can afford not to.
So again I turn it over to you, the readers. I should...
• Suck it up. Once it's installed and working, you'll have good internet and you won't care anymore. Increased productivity will eat it in no time at all. Downside: living with myself.
• Try Evdo Rev. A with a USB stick. You'll only get a few hundred kbps of throughput, but it's only $60 a month and you'll get almost a year of service for what Verizon will charge just to turn DSL on. And you can take it with you. Downside: is it really going to have the latency and throughput to get work done, 10 hours a day?
• Go back to getting 300ft covered with 802.11n. A few brick walls and a roof shouldn't be that hard to blast a signal through given enough directional antenna.
In the office there is no cable. But In my heart there is sadness, for I was dumb enough to lease an office without looking up the true cost of non-residential internet.
the latest
latest episodes
My vote is for flexing your radio muscles on some range extension techniques.
All the equipment will be YOURS.
Control of said equipment will be YOURS.
Responsibility for learning and implementing the solutions will be...well yes, YOURS, but in the end every single thing you build and learn is YOURS! :D
(So you got that goin' for ya, which is pretty cool.)
All of this grandeur is assuming you have the time and the inclination of course.
Otherwise just pay the money. It's also an option.
I don't know how many people are in that building, so forgive me if I assume too much... What about sharing the costs with others in the building? Either by just sharing the single DSL line or, given a large enough coop, using a larger pipe for the whole building.
As someone who lives in the boondocks, I can comment on EVDO Rev A. It's pretty much all i have available in the way of broadband.
Practically speaking, it has worked fine for me. I'm 7-10 miles away from a tower, with a directional antenna. I get 1.5m down, 256/512k down on the average.
You will have to commit to a 2 year plan, or shell out ~$200 for a decent EVDO modem. Make sure you get one that has an antenna jack in case you have/want to do an external antenna. Both Sprint's and Verizon's plans are now true 'unlimited' data plans.
The only real problem I've had with it in the last 6-8 months is during heavy rain or snow, mostly due to the distance to the tower.
Personally, though, I'd do the dry loop DSL, and forget the $200 internal premise wiring check. Just make sure you can test at the demarc if there's a problem with the DSL and you have to call support. Actually, I'd probably put the modem at the demarc (getting rid of any pesky DSL distance issues), and run ethernet up to the office. That way if there is a DSL issue, it's ONLY at the demarc, and it's easy to test by taking a laptop there.
Im going with Strider here, learning how it all works can be a pain but it would be more than worth it in the long run. Having someone with good wifi extension experience be there helping you out would make sure you don't make stupid newbie mistakes. I am sure the Wifi Predator which was mentioned here (or on the main boingboing site, I can't remember now) at http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/261/42/ will be adaptable to get the signal from one particular access point, and repeat your signal to the new place. It isn't illegal to use if you own that access point and you are simply extending it.
$420 in setup fees? What are they smoking?
I suggest trying Evdo via a rental for a week or so, to try it out. If it doesn't work well enough for you, pony up the money for DSL -- but if it does, you can switch over to your own Evdo contract.
Pasadena Wireless sells lots of antennas for cheap. Try going for more db. You can always sell it on ebay to cover your losses:
http://www.wlanparts.com/c=Eowas8f6C8YVtDAZVlhXQgVx6/category/antennas/
I have couple of theses that I would just give you if I still lived in SF: http://www.wlanparts.com/product/GD24-15P-NF/24_GHz_15dBi_gain_Grid_parabolic_dish.html
Another option is setting up a Mesh network. Try to find someplace between your 300' path to add a another wireless access point to help cover the distance. Do it in 2 hops instead of just one.
I feel your pain. I bought my house without first verifying broadband availability. I saw a digital cable box during the initial walkthroughs and figured I was covered. BIG MISTAKE. The cable system is not 2-way, hence no on demand, no internet.
For two long, horrible years I endured Hughesnet satellite service. The less said about that painful experience, the better.
Recently, Sprint and Verizon have both been aggressively building out their EVDO networks, and my semi-rural area is now covered. I went with Sprint, and it's a huge improvement. The bandwidth isn't half bad; I frequently see downloads peaking at about 130KB/s, though 90-100 is more typical.
One other thing you might think about investigating is other DSL carriers such as COVAD, or outfits like Speakeasy that use them. I'm a happy ex-Speakeasy customer, though that was before Best Buy bought them. You might get a better deal that way.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions.
To update, the building manager says they've dealt with this before and I shouldn't have to pay the whopping $200 to have the inside lines checked over. The building has good phone wiring from demarc to individual units.
However, I'm going to give WWAN a try. I have a WWAN card sitting around from Novotel, waiting for an excuse to review it; here I go. Sprint has a 30-day money back guarantee. If it isn't up to snuff, I'll get DSL and suck it up.
I'll experiment with antennas to see if I can get a good connection, but at this point, that's more of an academic interest. Needs must as the devil may.
i recently had a nasty experience with dsl providers, i was paying and i *thought* that the dsl account on the line was actually in my name, and that the lessor of the line was going to be reasonably prompt about changing the name of the owner of the line to me, but nuuuu - the stupid dsl provider of my flatmate (telstra, by the way) churned my connect off the line leaving me with not being able to connect to the line even though it clearly appeared to be active, and now i look at the change of owner of account form and it's like 7 pages long and even if i filled it out due to possible credit fail i may not even succeed in changing over.
almost a month after this monumental botch-up of a farce i still can't use the dsl account i am paying for, fortunately the contract ends at the end of this month. the dsl provider that cut off my internet connection didn't do the right thing and return the connection to my provider.
it took a whole week for me to finally find out the full story.
shortly after i figured out what was going on i decided that i was sick of chatting checking my email on my mobile phone, handy as that is (you should try chatting with T9 predictive input sometime on a phone with fairly stupid software, ok it's not too bad but when a word is not in the dictionary it sucks and then for some reason inside java apps when i teach it new words it never remembers) - i decided to get virgin broadband's broadband at home service, which is a 3g (umts/hsdpa) modem with wifi, 1 ethernet port and a 'landline' phone socket which has 'unlimited' national calls.
the latency is much better than i remember from my first time using 3g with an ipwireless modem when i lived in aukland, usually my ping to texas based irc servers from queensland, australia is around 300ms which is only 100ms slower than dsl. the cost of the service is quite decent too. it only has 4gb of full speed quota for the $70 a month but the lack of bullshit and the fact that i can relocate this service should i need to, to anywhere in this country with 3g coverage, and the very decent price on phone service, i'm much happier.
personally, unless the service is optical fibre to my router inside my house, i'm done with wires and their implicit tie to the monopoly of the old school of telecoms companies. i work as a freelance computer technician primarily working with domestic clients and i am also finding that the service provided by cable internet services is crap, they provide routers that are crippled and are unreliable (motorola surfboards seem to be the flavour of the month for optus and telstra here).
virgin broadband, on the other hand, arrived 3 days after i submitted my application online, no credit card details required up front. i had a little bit of trouble getting the service to register my new connection, once i did, it worked great, i filled out the payment authorisation form and popped it into the free postage letter they gave to pay my monthly fees and i've never looked back. about 3 hours of frustration with the registration system, and an hour on the phone, but that got it working.
i can't believe it took almost 3 weeks to finally get to the point where i got sent a change of account form from the phone line lessor. i actually need the internet to do the work i do and when 2 weeks offline was looming i decided i was sick of saying to clients that i might take longer to fix their computer because my internet was disconnected due to stupidity.
dsl providers, on the whole, are retarded, in australia, with the exception of iinet, whose prices and service is the best i've seen. even their helpdesk line has prompt response (it would be awesome if they could get into wireless, but i don't trust most of the wholesalers/infrastructure providers to do a good job). i have no idea what american providers are like but i keep hearing these horror stories about verizon and comcast and qwest and whatnot and i do wonder whether there is actually any good dsl providers in the usa.
I paid 800€ for an internet connection at work.
If you want to experiment with WLAN to your home and other alternatives, you *will* spend a considerable amount of time with that instead of working.
I definitely recommend you to pay what you have to pay for good service if you are serious about getting work done.
Wild Blue
Ditch the office lease by breaking it or sub-leasing it. Then be stronger about not being distracted when working from home. Then relax at home!