<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>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.</p>
<p>I have two main drivers that are forcing the decision:</p>
<ol>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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.</li>
</ol>
<p>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. </p>
<p>It is my understanding that only AT&T and Comcast serve my
street. <br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I'm all (rabbit) ears, so let your replies rip. <br>
</p>
<p>- Jeff<br>
</p>
</body>
</html>