Throughout most of the United States choosing a modern
ISP is a lot like
choosing a phone company in the 1960s. A few of them exist, but only one of them has the rights to service your area. The multitudes of
dial-up ISPs were purchased, merged, or evolved as the nation shifted its focus towards so-called
high-speed Internet access which had the side effect of restricting options to either the local
telephone company or the local
cable monopoloy.
In my case, I'm stuck with the
cable monopoly. Neither
DSL nor
Verizon FIOS is available, and after dealing with
misleading advertising, failure to provide services contracted for, and blatant lies from Comcast salespeople I saw myself with few options.
Fortunately, Comcast is forced to allow competitors to access its cable lines.
Earthlink, one of the evolved dial-up ISPs, resells Internet access over Comcast's lines and a comparable rate--both in terms of price and speed.
Earthlink has surprised me in a few places; not everything is good, but it's not all bad either.
Starting with the set-up, I was forced to pay about $50 for Earthlink to send out a
Comcast contractor to do an "installation" that amounted to the contractor reconnecting to cables in the garage and reading the number off of my
cable modem. I also got a 3' length of cable out of it.
The first time the modem came up, it was on the
Comcast sandbox network. The modem then reset and
I came back up with an Earthlink IP. That was it. With Comcast I'd needed to talk to somebody with a thick accent before getting out of their sandbox.
I'm also happy that my e-mail is working again, something that Comcast had broken about two months into service.