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DIRECTV Broadband Shuts Down
Phroggy writes "Effective today (Friday the 13th), DIRECTV Broadband is officially out of business. The company will remain partially operational for the next 60 to 90 days, and we will work to transition our roughly 160,000 customers to another provider. Details are still sketchy. So, anybody gonna be hiring in the Portland area in a couple months?" There's a press release about the shutdown.
DirecTV is the only residential provider in my area that provides static IP, hopefully i'll run across somewhere else. btw the support phone number has a message basically saying that they are shutting down within the next 30 days and to please not call them anymore.
Please keep in my that my ADHD keeps me a little scatter brained and I sometimes can't focus long enough to
I dunno why they posted this under "Ask Slashdot", but here's some more info:
DSLReports (forum)
DirecTV DSL (info for customers)
Press Release from Hughes (parent company of DirecTV)
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Well, here's their customer FAQ that explains a lot.
Kill Trolls Dead. Here's
I don't see any mention of Portland in the press release. Is there a Portland office shutting down?
Well, if that's the case then join the party... there are plenty of us here not working.
Sorry, but DirecTVDSL had nothing to do with satellite broadboand, just dsl. They had a good service at a good price (never had a problem with mine).
I highly recommend speakeasy if you need another option. The provide good service and have the smoothest installation I've seen. I also got a free PS/2 out of them when I signed up :)
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I don't have ANY broadband internet options in my area, and no telco or cable company has plans to offer it either. And I live 45 mins from Washington DC. Very Sad.
Last time I looked into Satellite broadband internet, you had to have a special card installed in your Windows or Mac machine. Thats right - no Linux support.
Not sure if DirecTV offered a Linux compatible satellite internet solution, but I think I would have noticed it if they did.
It certainly is frustrating conducting internet business at 56k...
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
What does DSL have to do with a dish service? Did people have to have the satelite service + the DSL service as a package to get it? Was there any discount?
Marketing had some package deals going on, and I think they managed to get combined billing working, but other than that, no, DirecTV Broadband has nothing to do with DirecTV.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Stream, XO, Powell's, Wal-Mart, Plaid Pantry, Fred Meyer ....
Oh, you want a high-paying IT job? Better start thinking about your own business, and I don't mean consulting. It's death valley for IT in Oregon right now.
Finding God in a Dog
Yeah, DirectWay or DirecPC (their other broadband services) are probably the only options I have (until Ricochet comes in).
.5 to 1 sec range! (So I've heard from users, but can't personally verify.)
I too thought "hmmm... DirecTVDSL, maybe it goes through the satellite... naaaah."
DirecPC is interesting because it does the download from a satellite (about 300 to 400 kbps) but the upload from a dial-up connection. So you have to use their software that splits your traffic for you. You get fairly good response since most users download a lot, but upload little. The drawback is that you still need a separate phone line.
DirecWay is actual TWO-way satellite broadband. It was supposed to get the same 300 - 400kbps download speed and a 128kbps upload speed.
Sounds great until you think of the actual time taken for clicks to be processed. Since your signal has to go from your roof to a satellite, to earth, do stuff, then take the same course back, response lag can range up to the
This makes certain applications fail (including a Web application we make). Once you get a response it is very fast, but the lag... wow...
TTFN
> People could never get past the DirecTV name
I have had people ask if DSL meant "Direct Satellite Link"
No, they aren't. Leave. Leave now. I searched for vain for a year for any position in Portland/Vancouver after being RIF'd.
There are no jobs in Portland.
Run. Run very fast.
Um.. they are not stopping service - you don't even have to RTFA - just read the post which explains that they will work to transition our roughly 160,000 customers to another provider.
So you will have service, it will just be with another service provider.
I'm on DirecTV DSL right now...so I have 60-90 days to switch to new ISP?
If you stay with DirecTV DSL, we'll try to migrate you to a new ISP and make it as painless as possible (no guarantees about that, but we'll do our best). If you cancel, you have to wait for the LEC to release your line before you can sign up with another DSL provider, so you're looking at around a month of downtime if you choose to go that route. However, I have no idea what the new ISP will be, and they may not offer a static IP. Check the web site (don't call!); there may be more info on Tuesday.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I got nothing but crap from DIRECTV Broadband in the wake of the Rhythms collapse last fall. Despite being guaranteed that my SDSL service would continue, it shut down mid-September. I tried for three months to get it repaired and got repeated promises that it would be fixed. Finally, I "cancelled" (how can you cancel non-existant service?) in frustration. Three months later, the bills starting rolling in. DIRECTV was trying to charge me for two months of service I never got, and they claimed that I cancelled my service!
Needless to say, I was furiously pissed. I spent six months trading letters and faxes, got sent to collections, appealed, and was denied. I finally deemed the issue not worth my time and paid the stupid bill.
So, F*ck You, DIRECTV. You got what you deserved. I've spent the last year at 26kbps dialup. Thank God that AT&T/Comcast will finally be completing their broadband upgrade in my city next month.
- Necron69
No, because they will no longer exist. You won't be charged any cancellation fees though and they will help you transition to a new isp.
Profit margins for DSL are pretty low. A lot of the ISPs were forced to fit in a small market, so some of them were destined to buckle. I've heard mixed reviews of DirecTV, but if you were with them for the static IPs/power-user benefits, Speakeasy offers much of the same, and it's one of the only growing DSL ISPs in the nation. They're also running some damn nice promotions that make me a tad jealous of our customers (I am an employee).
One of the problems with a lot of the providers is their failure to differentiate. Its hard to tell the difference between a lot of these ISPs because they don't provide any one thing better than other companies. Most of these companies shot for bill consolidation, which is nice, but hardly something you can sell yourself off of, since so many internet access companies provide it (direcTV dsl, any ILEC ISP, cable broadband, etc.). There's just too many competitors shooting for the bargain/cheap-goods approach.
Having offered a plug for Speakeasy, I must warn you, they're not cheap, because you pay for what you get (or you get what you pay for, depends on how you want to approach it, I guess). That said, you get a lot of things most other ISPs wouldn't dream of offering.
As always, if you want a good medium to get recommendations, DSL Reports is a good place to go. Don't take my word on Speakeasy, their reputation there will speak for itself.
However, there is one thing to keep in mind - being in the DSL business, at the consumer level, is asking for a potentially complicated relationship. Installation can be quite a pain, and this has as much to do with any one of your phone lines, local phone company, and fate, as it does with the ISP itself. Some people aren't aware of this or don't realize it, and they get frustrated, and since the ISP is the front line of service, they're the ones who get the blame.
Moo
I know the HR people for the large IT employers (NIKE, Intel) they numbers show IT unemployment at 30-40%.
:) so as to raise their wages. In the meantime I think we need to get used to much lower pay here in the US or else go into a field where it's difficult to have your job exported overseas
I like to do informal employment surveys at various geek gatherings I attend in Portland (PLUG, Perl Mongers, etc), I basically ask, "Who's working?" and over the last year it always turns out that around 50% of the folks I ask are not working.
I suggest you write our elect officials and get them to impose some sort of tax or tarif on over seas out-sourced labor.
It sounds like a nice idea, but how would that work? How could it possibly be enforceable? We should be greatly curtailing the number of H1B's we let in to fill engineering jobs too, but I have a sneaking suspicion that that'll just accellerate the move to design offshore.
Yes, Im serious. It is impossible to compete on a monetary level, and most management just see the numbers now, not the numbers for the people to fix the crap they get from overseas.
Aye, but there's the rub! There are lots of design groups overseas in India, China, Russia that are not producing crap, but good code. Coding well is not something that only Americans can do. The fact is that it's quite easy to outsource software engineering & IT jobs overseas to competant workers that will produce for much less $$$$ - thanks to the internet. I suspect that what we need to do is try to encourage the formation of unions among India's software engineers (and I'm only half joking
(What was that "I'm a Dentist" song from "Little Shop of Horrors"? )
Software Engineering & IT jobs used to be among the higher paid jobs in the US, but going forward that will no longer be the case - they will be average to low paying professions I suspect. You'll have to be a marketeer or lawyer or some such in order to be paid well. It's sad really, the US used to be known for it's engineering prowess but now all we're becoming known for is our ability to market, advertise and file lawsuits - nothing productive.
Just FREAKING great.
Damn Slashdot finds out before the freaking customers do.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Warning! Don't click on his sig!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Does this mean I stil have to mail them their modem or I get to keep it permently? I would nto mind keeping it so I can hack around with it. Any ideas? Can it be used as a normal DSL modem?
It's not fake, it really is a router - so no, it won't work with another ISP, unless you could get the ISP to spoof Telocity's servers, which they could only do if they had inside knowledge of exactly what the gateway is looking for when it tries to download configs.
You'll notice you're on a 4-IP subnet. Add one to the last octet of your IP address; that's the gateway's LAN interface. The gateway also has a WAN interface on a different subnet. It's a router.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
> As long as T1's and T3's cost the price they do,
> _someone_ has to bear that. The customer
> complains it shouldnt be them it should be the
> ISP. But why is that exactly?
All this hype that has is circling around about 10% of the users sucking up 80% of the bandwidth and thus killing broadband companies and causing the price to rise is complete and utter bullshit.
I did an economic report on the broadband industry (I would gladly post if if I had more bandwidth) and the problem is *not* that too much bandwith is being consumed, but that *not enough people have signed up for braodband thus negating the economies of scale the broadband companies projected*!!!
The marginal cost of extra bandwith is miniscule compared to the capital cost of the equipment deployed for broadband. ATT, Verizon, etc all own the backbone and have a *lot* of dark fiber they could utilize at any moment if the demand were there (the cost of a T-1 is *only* expensive to businesses because they have to pay *extra for a balanced line specifically for them* -- and their business is a much further away from the hubs then a broadband router). The problem is that *demand is not there* and the users that they do have have to offset the capital costs that they sank.
Americans are not computer educated and have no need for broadband in general. Furthermore, there is no way to generate demand for broadband until broadband is widely used (for instance, to make high-quality video availible over the Internet the companies have to have a lot of users, but there won't be a lot of high-bandwith users until high-quality video is avaiable).
Furthermore, due to the FCC deregulation causing media keiretsus, the broadband companies will not offer any service to boost demand due to conflicts of interest. For instance, Verizon could *easily* offer long-distance toll-free telephone over DSL, but this would cause the substitution effect against their own telephone service with very little income effect becuase there is little demand for broadband.
Face it, this bullshit about 10% of the users costing broadband companies too much is just that -- bullshit. If it were really an issue they could implement token bucket weighted fair queueing and everything would be fixed. It is an attempt to convince their inelastic consumers that they are hurting and need more $$ from them. It is so they can suck up consumer surplus from their inelestic consumers by introducing a-la-carte pricing while avoiding backlash by spreading this myth.
The broadband companies are hurting very much, but it has *nothing* to do with people downloading too much -- it is completely due to the fact that the number of people that have signed up are *nowhere* near their projections thus they are trying to offset their capital costs by sucking $$ out of their faithful customers.
If you need evidence of this bandwidth myth, just look at South Korea -- they have 20Mbit connections to their homes chepaer then we do and they don't have bandwidth issues. What they did as opposed to us is that the government boosted demand before broadband rollout by offering computer education virtually free to the entire country -- thus the demand was high enough to offset capital costs at the introduction and because everyone had broadband they could create apps for broadband causing more demand for broadband (and the self-feeding cycle continues).
We never met that critical demand mass here.
In summary, don't listen to the bandwidth crap. It is marketing hype to calm the masses before they start introducing by-the-megabyte pricing to suck up consumer surplus (the people who use the most bandwith are the least likely to completely drop broadband, afterall). All of this is worse then the stupid 'viral' GPL marketing crap that MS put out and now everyone seems to quote.
If I upset you, mod me to hell. If you want to discuss make a good argument.
No, in general the service was rocky.
Three months to install.
First bill was double billed because they openned two accounts in my name but only provided service on one.
Billed full monthly amount for the first 20 days of service.
Refused to assist with DSL problems when Rythums was going out of business making the DSL unusable but also refused to provide free dial up until Rythums was offically out of business.
The gateway's web server at 10.5.1.2 violated HTTP standard by issuing an empty "Content-type" in the header causing some web browsers to fail including earlier version of Mozilla.
Email service continually suffered from problems.
Calls to technical support commonly required waiting over an hour on hold.
Policy to not call customers back and to refuse providing updates for 72 hours when the customer calls back even if the tech already closed the call out for a continuing issue.
During the last three months I got DirecTV DSL, the connection stopped from 2am-6am every night. Only twice around 4am did unplugging and plugging back in the gateway do anything, every other time the connection continued to remain down. DirecTV still billed for the full month since it was "an intermitted sync issue." The problem was never fixed over the three month despite the call being closed by several techs.
After cancellation, took over three months and a dozen requests to get them to send the return label for the gateway to the correct address (they kept adding an apartment number to an address of a house so the post office refused to deliver the label).
Charged $500 to my credit card for a "free" gateway.
Took over three months to refund my credit card in violation of Mastercard merchent contract which states that the refund must be provided withen 30 days of recieving return goods.
Geeee... with how much the DSL service "rocked," I wonder if I should try their TV "service." Well, if I was into the HU emulation scene then maybe but naaaaa. I'm no longer a baby that needs my cradle "rocked." I would prefer to get *service.* Something that you DirecTV employees do not understand.