"Well, it was bound to happen eventually."
I got a call a few weeks ago on a Saturday from a Verizon employee. He wanted to confirm that I had received notice that my service was going to be "upgraded". Of course, I had not. So he proceeded to politely explain that I was going to be switched over from a CAP line to a DMT line. That's a good thing. Unfortunately, I was going to need new hardware. In itself, that's not bad, but it does preclude my use of a static IP.
Right now, I can access my home computer form anywhere via an IP address. I know exactly what those four numbers are and they never change. If I get this new equipment, that will change and I'll have to settle with a PPPoE/DHCP account. That doesn't make me happy.
So I spent a while talking to this dude about his definition of "upgrade", which basically amounted to increasing speed by about 10% while eliminating all other useful features of my line. Finally, I got him to give me a number where I could discuss the keeping of my static IP with someone.
They weren't open on Saturday. I'm sure this is evidence of Verizon's plan of acting ignorant to acheive their goals, as is much of what follow here.
Anyway, I called them on the following Monday and they gave me the runaround. I talked to three different people in different offices (I have all of their names, in case I need to call them again) and didn't really get anywhere with the static IP. Basically, what I am able to surmize from the bits I get from each operator is that only their business division can assign static IPs, but their busniess division won't talk to me because I am a residential customer. More mind-boggling is that when I asked the business department associate about how to become a business-class customer, they sent me over to residential support.
By the end of the conversation, I ended up with my speed boosted to 1.5mb/s. Which, under the impression I was given, would be added to the line on Wednesday the 19th (March). Of course it wasn't.
So I called on the 20th to ask what was going on. I guess I have to wait until my line is switched over to DMT before they'll order the upgrade. And the upgrade will take an additional 3 business days. So sometime in during the first week of April I should see some kind of nebulous speed increase.
In case you were wondering, I can figure out how fast my DSL connection is by visiting DSL Reports. I bought some credits and have been testing on the New Jersey server. If I test on the sites in California, I get a horrible <300kb/s on my line, which is supposed to be 640kb/s. When I test in New Jersey, though, I got one reading of 575kb/s, which isn't too bad. But I expect to see a pick-up when the equipment is switched over, and three times that when the real speed upgrade takes effect. You are sure to hear of the benefits (more likely, problems) of the change within the coming week, since the harware switch is scheduled for Wednesday the 26th.
