<rant>
(I'm calling SBC Michigan Bell, as I always have. I've never in all the years I've had a phone written a check to "Ameritech" or "SBC". Always to "Michigan Bell", just to make a point.)

Wait, you're saying, you haven't declared a winner in the 6 megabit contest yet.

Yea, well. Michigan Bell is screwing me up big time. Their service techs suck total ass.

To be technical, I currently have a layer 1 sync at 6 megabits down, 601k up. Fat lot of good that does me. For OSI layers 1 and 2, my dependence is on Michigan Bell to provide the circuit to my ISP. Let me tell a story. It starts on Thursday, my install date.

Thursday, my install order closes at 2:38pm, saying "tested, it works". Guess what. It didn't. I was getting no DSL signal at the demarc. Michigan Bell refused to close the ticket until midnight, since they technically have the entire day to complete the install, even though THE TECH SAID HIS JOB WAS DONE. I thought this was dumb, but it's just the beginning.

Friday, My friend at the ISP is up with me at 9am, I look at my flashing link light, and say "call in the ticket."

They said the repair could occur anytime between then and 12 noon Saturday. Well, I stay home so I can keep on them about it. Nothing happens. I go to bed around 6am Saturday morning (please note it wasn't working at 6am).

Saturday Morning, I awake to the sound of my fax machine ringing (the DSL is on my fax line), and I jump up. My DSL line has sync. yay!
So the tech shows up at my door not 10 minutes later. He walks out to the demarc, says "It works at the demarc now" (no shit, sherlock. It was working with 0% errors at my desk, I'd imagine it works at the demarc too.)
"I don't know what was wrong with your line, it must be inside wiring, because I didn't do anything to the line, it was working when I got here."
So I blow him off, send him on his way, and look. Layer 2 failure, ATM ping failures, the whole nine yards. I'm hooked to the DSLAM, but it's not going anywhere from there. For you data geeks, this is roughly equivalent to being plugged into an ethernet switch where no traffic can flow. You have link, but fat lot of good that does you. My fax rings again, and I pick it up. It's SBC DSL. They're telling me the tech found nothing wrong, and that it was my internal wiring. "Bullshit. It started working just before he made his test call. I hauled a DSL modem to the demarc last night before we called in the ticket, and no link. Look, I'm getting a layer 2 failure, ATM segment pings and end to end pings are failing. I sync at 6 megs down, 601 up, no errors."
"umm. Hold on."
*two minutes of silence*
"I see segment ping passing, but end to end is failing"
"okay, can you confirm a VPI of 0 and a VCI of 35?"
"Yes, that's the settings"
"Okay, can you have provisioning look at this? It's an obvious provisioning error"
"I'm going to have to send a technician out to your site, earliest I can do is Monday at 1pm"
"No. Unacceptable. I've already stayed home 2 days for this circuit, and it's been SBC's fault the whole time. I want this escalated"
"okay, please hold"
*2-3 minutes of silence*
"Earliest we can do is 1pm Monday, there's only one technician in your area and she's doing 5 jobs Monday before yours."
"What?!? One technician? That's nonsense."
"Sorry, it's the best I can do."

So now I have a technician coming onsite to waste even more of my time. Now I see why cablemodem is so wildly successful. If this ISP wasn't server friendly, giving me an IP allocation, and giving such great speeds, and has a friend of mine at the wheel, I'd just stay with cable. This is absolutely ridiculous.

</rant>