I finally got off my duff last week and signed up for BellSouth Fast Access DSL Xtreme and so far I’m pretty happy with it. Well, it was a rocky start, but now it’s good.

I signed up last Thursday and was told my DSL modem would be here by 02/23, which is this Thursday. This morning I discovered that my existing DSL connection with EarthLink was dead. I tried to bring it back up through my SonicWall router but it wouldn’t come up. Let me qualify that: it wouldn’t come up to a point of usability, but it did get an IP address that was different from the one’s EL would give me. Thus I surmised that BellSouth had gone ahead and switched the line, even though I still didn’t have the modem.

The same thing happened to a friend who made the switch to BellSouth a month or so ago. His modem arrived on the same day, but a few hours after the switch. And that’s what happened to me. Mine arrived around noon. Now, how hard would it be to include a slip of paper in the box that says “Hey, when you get this thing plugged in, give us a call and we’ll make the switch?” I guarantee the switch didn’t take longer than a few minutes, and by doing that, they could save their customers some frustration. I’m no longer frustrated, but I was then.

So how fast is it? Well, with EarthLink I was on a 1.5M/128K plan. Now with BellSouth I’m on their “Xtreme” plan that is supposed to be 3.0M/384K. I tested it twice today using DSL Reports Speed Test and got 2,630K/297K, which ain’t bad. Plus it was cheaper than EL, so that’s a bonus.