Four months ago, almost to the day, I switched from Cox Communications to AT&T for my Internet, I had ‘cut the cord’ in regard to TV 2 years previous, there’s nothing on cable TV for me anymore, certainly not at $170 a month. Anyway, you can read all about why I switched from Cox Communications to AT&T here.
Last Monday, July 30, 2018, when I arrived back from enrolling my son in high school at about 7:30pm, I sat down at my computer and it warned me that I was connected to my network, but had no Internet. So, I got on my phone, used the AT&T app to check for outages and there was an outage in my area, so I left it there, expecting the Internet to be working before the evening was out, but by midnight, it was still down.
I waited a little longer, trying to fall asleep, but, by 2am, being unable to sleep as per normal for my insomniac self, I decided to call AT&T technical support after noticing the red ‘Alarm’ light was illuminated on the AT&T Optical Network Terminal (ONT), which after some research I found that the red alarm light means no optical light signal was reaching the ONT, which explains why my Internet was not working.
During the call, the AT&T tech support rep went through the usual, unplug, restart routine they have to do, being a former tech support rep myself, I realize that sometimes its as simple as a, in my best Roy from The IT Crowd voice, “have you tried turning it off and on again?” to fix a variety of issues. Obviously, I had tried these steps already, but the reps have to go through it regardless of whether I had already done it.
It soon became apparent that something was broken outside of my home, so the rep said that there is no point testing the modem as there was no optical signal reaching my ONT box. So, we moved into scheduling a tech visit and the initial slot she could find was over 36 hours away, which obviously won’t work for me. I explained that I work from home and need the Internet to work, she looked again for a priority slot and found a slot between 2 – 4pm, the next day, July 31, 2018, which I immediately accepted.
The technician arrived at 3pm, the halfway point of the arrival window. When he rang my doorbell, he said, I think I have already fixed the issue, which I knew he had done, as my internet suddenly popped back online. He explained that the fiber cable inside the AT&T box on the outside of my home was broken, which was the old style fiber cable, he simply replaced it with the newer, stronger fiber cable.
I constantly hear how terrible AT&T customer service is, but four months in, my experience has been very different, I really have no complaints, even while dealing with AT&T, on my mother-in-law’s behalf, my experience has been positive. Hopefully, it stays that way and, as importantly, AT&T don’t start throttling traffic from certain providers, as they are entitled to do since the net neutrality rules were rolled back by Ajit Pai’s FCC, If this experience changes, I can assure you that I will write about it on myblog-online.
