Get AT&T DSL for $10

My alternate title for this post was "AT&T in Leauge with Devil" or "AT&T Sits on a Throne of Lies".

I was a loyal AT&T customer for over 6 years until, 2004 when they merged with Cingular. The merger promised to give uninterrupted and improved service (not to mention uninterrupted) to all customers. Instead, by March 2006 AT&T/Cingular stopped maintaining AT&T facilities in order to force customers to 1) pay to upgrade their phones to the Cingular network, 2) pay an early termination fee (even though their contract was with AT&T and not Cingular) or 3) live with the degraded and spotty service (read: I couldn't get a signal in my own apartment). I'm still waiting to see how the class action suit pans out.

Then last March, AT&T/Cingular began blocking service to competing conference call services who offered their services for free in order to 1) pressure the local providers into lowering their rates or 2) force customers back to their AT&T's own conference call offerings.

Now I find that as part of a concession made to the FCC for its Bellsouth merger, AT&T was required to offer DSL for $10 a month to its entire 22 state coverage area for a period of 2 years. While AT&T does offer such a plan, they have refused to publicize or promote it and have buried it deep where you will never find it on their plan page. The offering matches AT&T's basic plan with download speeds of up to 768 kilobits per second and upload speeds of up to 128 kbps (except for half the price).

The story and links can be found at The Consumerist and DigitalDaily