 Review by espaeth 
UPDATED: 211 days ago
member for 9.2 years, 2390 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Minneapolis,Hennepin,MN
 $39 per month (12 month contract)
 about 7 days
 "It's up most of the time, latency without interleave is good, static IP available"
 "More outages than cable"
 "It serves its purpose for what I need."
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(ratings match consensus)
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Update: December 2009 -- Embarq is now CenturyLink, and I'm still on the dry DSL $39.95 3/640 plan as a backup to my Comcast service. A few weeks back it appears my DSLAM equipment was changed out and my noise margin took a big hit. I got converted back to interleaving and my line badly needs it, with millions of corrected frames now due to the reduced noise margin. I still seem to get full throughput, but there is more jitter so I've pushed my VoIP traffic over to my cable connection. Overall it's still a serviceable backup connection, but it's really only seeing occasional traffic during infrequent outages on my Comcast connection.
Update: December 2007 -- Embarq recently started offering "Direct DSL" (aka Naked DSL). I don't need the phone line as I already have VoIP and a great cell phone plan, so this was a great option to save $22/mo. This brought the price back in line with Comcast HSI service, so I bumped my value for the money rating up a notch. Outage-wise the service has been a lot more stable lately. Sprint added GlobalCrossing transport in addition to Sprintlink in this market which overall is working out better than I expected. Over a year later and I'm still happy with the service for my needs.
I signed up for Embarq DSL last year to augment my existing Comcast cable service and provide connection redundancy. I'm on-call for work 24x7x365, so if my Comcast connection would be down I'd have to drive into the office as it would take out my Vonage (now Viatalk) and VPN service. I investigated several options including fixed wireless and Sprint EVDO mobile data service but decided that the bandwidth and latency of DSL would be better.
Pros:
- I have 3m/640k service, and I am able to reach my provisioned speeds consistently
- After negotiating to get on "fast path" (no interleaving) my latency is on par with my Comcast cable service.
- Jitter is lower than cable, I route my VoIP RTP streams over DSL which yields a slight improvement in voice quality / mean opinion score numbers.
- Has saved my bacon a couple times during Comcast outages
- Uses Sprintlink whereas Comcast uses ATT. This backbone diversity has come in handy in cases like the recent fiber cut in Ohio which hit ATT harder than Sprintlink.
Cons:
- There are more outages on DSL than with my Comcast service, including a lengthy 4 day outage just before Halloween last year when the DSLAM needed to be replaced.
- Standalone DSL service is not available, so I have to pay for the dead weight of a basic metered line to qualify for DSL, and all the associated taxes & fees for having that line.
- Compared to cable in this market, the bandwidth/price ratio isn't nearly as favorable.
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