SBC has been advertising a DSL special in which you get their basic DSL service for only $14.95/mo with a one year commitment. I was paying double that, $29.95/mo so I decided to call them up and see what they could do for me. I knew that the $14.95 promo was for new customers only, but I’m kind of cheap so I was prepared to threaten to cancel my service and then sign up again to get the deal.

It turns out that I didn’t have to go that far. The customer service rep informed me that I could get the current promotion as long as I signed up for another year’s commitment. No problem! She also informed me that the $14.95 deal is only if you get another SBC package with it (caller ID, long distance, etc.). I didn’t want any of those so the best I could get would be $19.95/mo. That’s still a fantastic deal – less than AOL dial-up!

I also asked about getting the Pro package. Unfortunately, I still don’t qualify because I’m too far from the central office. However, she suggested calling back in a couple of months. SBC is busy rolling out their fiber network (Project Lightspeed) and she thought that when that was complete, I would likely be able to qualify for the Pro package. If my neighborhood is upgraded to fiber, then I should be able to get speeds a good deal faster than the current Pro package (3 Mbps down/768 Kbps up). That would certainly improve the performance of RohJuh.com significantly; the site would peform, for all intents and purposes, as good as a professionally hosted site. Unfortunately, telcos move pretty slowly so we’ll just have to wait and see. Hurry up SBC!

Posted by Roger at 5:16 PM.