I had AT&T for a long time, and I don't care if they are giving out free steaks and BJs... Its NOT worth it. Their customer service, and the quality of the connection is so crappy I wouldn't recommend that anyone do this. That being said, if you have no other choice but to use AT&T in your area you might as well get some free WOW.

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I would consider it, could have 2 accounts so I can run alts.

There is no way it can be worse than my Comcast service, which is off every day when I get home and usually d/c's once or twice before I go to bed. Several service calls and modems and nothing has changed.

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DSL is slower than cable?

In what reality?

I'm sorry, but cable providers are the most restrictive, lying, overselling companies providing internet access out there right now.

DSL providers at least don't bullshit you about what you're paying for. If you're subscribing to a 6mbt/512 line, you're mostly able to max that out at all hours of the day. Cable? Good luck at night! Yeah you're getting a "12mbit" connection, but if you can get 2 out of that from 8p-10p then you're on some magic undersubscribed node.

Speed isn't the only thing either, it's ping time. Cable networks are in my experience (5 providers in 4 cities) usually very very congested in peak times, so you enjoy a high ping time. DSL networks however, due to their structure mostly have a very small amount of hops to the internet. Comcast and Charter I was stuck at least 6 hops until I got to the internet, but with Speakeasy I'm 2 away. My ping times in peak time are 60ms or less. Can your "faster" cable do that?

Advertising propaganda is a pretty bad thing to judge a service on to say the least. I've had broadband for 10 years, and I've alternated between cable and DSL every time I've moved somewhere, always trying the cable for a while... and ultimately moving on to a superior DSL product. Every time.

That, and finding out the lovely packet shaping going on with Comcast lately, I can't imagine anyone intelligent choosing comcast over anything right now...

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NO!!!

Bad company...Bad service...Bad Deal


This deal is like getting a sucker at the dr's office right before he shoves his hand up your @$$

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DSL isn't much slower.

The max for AT&T is 6mb's. I know some cable companies offer 8mb, but that has to be shared. DSL is dedicated to the customer.

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lol 'to the nsa' - please tell me that was intentional

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I recently switched from Time Warner Cable to Cicinnati Bell's DSL. Testing the connection on Cable my results showed anywhere between 6 and 8 mbps at any given time of day/night/week/weekend etc... ALWAYS between 6/8. With DSL it is always right about 4 mbps.

HOWEVER, this drop in connection speed has not made a noticable difference in my surf or game responce. I see no difference what so ever no matter what I am doing.

I can't explain how this could be possible, but it is. I can't speak for any other providers, but DSL in Cincinnati is technically slower than Cable in Cincinnati, but it hasn't slowed down my surfing or gaming at ALL!

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lol i just switched from AT&T to TWC Road Running...just a warning AT&T moniters their traffic very closely.

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From my experience, DSL isn't that bad. Then again, I'm the only one who plays games over it, so I don't know how well multiple WoW players will do on it.
But as I will always say, we need bigger "tubes". The US is doing crappy when it comes to broadband, where countries in Europe are getting three times the speed at half the price.

The problem with this deal is that it's AT&T. It's the largest, and worst, of all the telecom companies. If at all possible, I would avoid them. Three months of WoW won't be worth it if they just see the game as a bandwidth hog (ie: why we need net neutrality).

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Lol commercialism at it's best!

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I agree with commenter #3 above. I recently switched to ATT DSL after around 10 years on cable. I was very skeptical having nothing but problems, big problems with att at work (Director of IT).

Couldn't be happier. Whereas cable always had unexplined outages and very low bandwidth delivery at peak times, the DSL line has been stable ever since I started it up over 6 months ago, and my bandwidth has been steady.

I've never interacted with their customer service and I'm sure it probably stinks, but it couldn't be any worse than my cable company's. I'll trade the same lousy customer service for a much better product any day.

Oh, did I mention my DSL package is 1/2 the cost of what I was paying for cable and twice the bandwidth???

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I use AT&T DSL (formerly SBC), in Texas. Its fine, almost never had any problems. Disconnects are very rare. WoW speed is fine, I get 150 ms latency while WOWing, and when my wife plays there isn't a hit either, we both get 150 ms latency usually. However I don't try to download stuff and do WoW, the lag is too bad. But DSL is fine for what you need, and we only pay $25 a month. (Versus, what $100 for cable + cable modem?)

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I work of an ISP that provides DSL service. I am also fortunate enough to live in a area that my employer serves. I have 8Mpbs/600Kpbs service and can run bandwidth test on speakeasy and actually see that I get what I'm paying for. Try that on Cable O.O

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As far as gaming goes, speed is usually a non factor. Online games don't use 6Mbps when you play them. The important factor here is ping times (hence they reason the put a ping meter in the game). Like an earlier poster said, there is generally less hops to get out of a DSL network then a Cable one. Due to my job, I currently have both a DSL and a Cable connection. Cable is far more laggy playing WoW then DSL at my house, even though the cable company advertises a much higher speed. If you are comparing them for the purpose of downloading large files, then yes, the bigger pipe will win.

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I think I'll pass. NSA has an easy enough time monitoring my Paladin as it is.

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"DSL isn't much slower.

The max for AT&T is 6mb's. I know some cable companies offer 8mb, but that has to be shared. DSL is dedicated to the customer."

Depends on the cable company. I have Charter 10mbs/1mbs...I've downloaded >1 TB per month and have yet to be penalized in any way.

Also, at least Charter and Comcast are not letting the NSA illegally monitor your communications as AT&T did/does.

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Seeing as how i've run this game on a dial-up connection at 56k... you are pissing in the wind over the difference between a 4mb pipe and a 8mb pipe...

Anything over 1mb and you can't really tell a difference in normal internet usage... people who need the larger pipes are usually running a lot of apps that stream massive amounts of data. like downloading movies, songs, and such... (not to moention porn)

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