[ale] State of play re home Internet with static IP

[Jim Kinney]

I've had comcast business for years. It's solid service. Outages are caused by vehicles and storms wiping out poles with wires. They hustle pretty fast on repairs. They can't spell Linux but If you can translate into windows speak, it works. The tech support is quite knowledgeable and they really do want to help.

It will be slower than residential service but it has no bandwidth limitations.

With tmobile, you can add a phone number to an existing account and can ring on multiple devices running the app. No Linux app other than android. $10/m to stuff the old number to a virtual phone. Other providers may have similar. Tmobile calls it "digits".

The old 2 wire stuff from AT&T is too brittle. 

On March 4, 2019 7:24:54 PM EST, Jeff Hubbs via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>After many years at the status quo (AT&T UVerse and POTS land line) I'm
>
>finally looking into a rework of the home telecomm situation.
>
>I have two main drivers that are forcing the decision:
>
> 1. Even after the shortest of power outages, upstream UVerse service
>    goes dead and stays dead for 10-20 minutes. This was not always the
>    case but in the last few years it's been the "new normal;" my wife
>   works at home via VPN enough that that's a problem, and it's no good
>   for me either. Yes, I have UPSses out the wazoo on everything and it
>    doesn't matter. I've tried to get through to AT&T by phone to at
>    least get the problem acknowledged but that's been impossible.
>2. There's a good chance I might be leaving town for my next job for an
>   unknown amount of time, but that won't mean that I'll stop being the
>    "IT guy" for the house; I will simply *have* to be able to shell in
>    from the outside. If there is such a thing as a "reflector" service
>    that sits on the Internet - even if it's my own server somewhere -
>    that gives me a way to tunnel in reverse through some kind of
>    connection that's initiated from inside the house, I don't want to
>    be dependent on it.
>
>Being able to run my own Internet-reachable web and email servers in
>the 
>house is anticipated but is secondary to those two main drivers.
>
>It is my understanding that only AT&T and Comcast serve my street.
>
>I've spoken to a rep for Comcast Business and they're telling me that 
>within reason (with respect to affected region(s) and length of outage,
>
>I presume) their service will remain unaffected by power outage. That 
>handles 1. above, and they also offer as few as one static IP address 
>which should be sufficient to handle 2.
>
>I have not yet called about any of AT&T's business residential
>offerings 
>but when I got a flyer in the mail about some kind of fiber service 
>being available in my neighborhood and called to inquire, I couldn't
>get 
>anything even remotely like a straight answer but the upshot was that 
>no, the fiber service wasn't available to me. I'm quite rather done
>with 
>AT&T, to be honest.
>
>Comcast says they can give me a VoIP-like service that can optionally 
>use my old phone number. I'm undecided on that; the phone rings with 
>random robocalls and other solicitations 3-5 times a day (Do Not Call 
>list notwithstanding) and there are only 3 living persons whom we know 
>who ever, *ever* call that line.
>
>We would like to have a TV service with DVR available and it's my 
>understanding from talking to Comcast that it would have to be Xfinity 
>piggybacked on the Comcast Business service. It would be either that or
>
>satellite to still have DVR. I've never dealt with satellite service 
>before but the houses to either side of us have it. I've built an HDTV 
>antenna and mounted it in the attic but I haven't completed the cabling
>
>to know for sure how well it will work, and if we went that route, 
>there'd be no DVR unless I went the whole MythTV (or equivalent) route 
>and I'm really not willing to try that again.
>
>I'm all (rabbit) ears, so let your replies rip.
>
>- Jeff

-- 
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