9/11    So what broadband should I get in Berkeley?  AT&T cable?
        SBC-pacbell DSL?  DSL through a different firm like Earthlink
        or Speakeasy?
        \_ Do it by price.  It's mostly the same.
        \_ AT&T BI cable has 256 kbps upstream.  Other than that there is
           price and month to month vs one year contracts.
        \_ A couple points of information on the matter:
           - Check out http://dslreports.com.  Kind of information overload,
             but somewhat useful.
           - AT&T varies a lot by location, but service quality seems to
             decline steadily over time.  Six months ago the cable modem at
             my apartment was great.  Now it's more or less unusable maybe
             80% of the time.
           - All DSL providers in the East Bay are doing transit through
             Pacbell or Covad's lines.  In effect, they are resellers.
           - Most DSL providers now require a 1 year contract, and charge
             a hefty fee if you cancel service early.  The only one I've
             found that does not is DSLExtreme.  That said, DSLExtreme
             waives the cost of the DSL modem if commit to a 1 year contract.
             DSLExtreme is a PacBell reseller.
             Please let me know if you find other DSL providers that don't
             require a 1 year contract.
           - Speakeasy has excellent service and enlightened policies (i.e.
             allows you to run servers; does not arbitrarily decide to
             firewall off ports 25 and 80).  Speakeasy is a little more
             expensive than most other providers I've seen.  Speakeasy is
             a Covad reseller.
           - A friend of mine has Earthlink DSL.  It is PPPoE, which is lame.
             Earthlink DSL firewalls off port 25 so you can't use
             non-Earthlink SMTP servers.  At one point, Earthlink was owned
             by COS.  I'm not sure if COS still has a controlling interest.
             This may affect whether or not you want to do business with
             them.
             -dans
           - pacbell dsl sale: $29 first 3 months, $50 thereafter,
             1 year commit,  but free DSL modem, free self-install kit,
             and no "connection" fee.
        \_ I found http://sonic.net through http://DSLReports.com. As an East Bay (actually
           Sonoma County) ISP, it resells PacBell DSL, as the above poster
           noted. I've had very good service -- 4 static IPs, servers allowed,
           etc.
        \_ I had a good experience with directv dsl.
        \_ Once AT&T took over the @home network, service has been high=
           Quality.  But eariler, our ld motorolla modem was failing. I
           bought a Linksys modem and a Linksys router. Things now work great.
           \_ I have the opposite experience.  I had better service when
              it was @home.