Who do I petition about DSL?

[btremel]

I’m not sure where to take this question because I can’t seem to get a human that understands what I’m talking about on the phone.

I live in a rural area of southwestern Pennsylvania.  Recently, DSL has become available for all of my neighbors in about a 10 mile stretch of road.  Verizon offered and provided DSL services to ALL of my neighbors (including those living next door to me on either side).  Yet, the Verizon representative continues to tell me that it’s not available for me, and at this time there is no plans to make it available. 

What’s even more interesting is that I’m willing to pay for the premium services to obtain the highest speeds to support my job.  I work from home most of the time and I work for a large fortune 500 company.  I have a strong need for this service and am looking forward to removing that big ugly dish I have now.  I also pay for premium land line services, which include additional phone, Internaional calling and answering services.

I asked for someone local to call me and explain why I will never be able to acquire DSL at my location, when I can physically see and walk to two of my neighbors that can?  I would like to know where the DSLAM’s are and why my home was omitted from the plans cover our area?  Version will not answer my question and the lady on the phone told me that no one will ever call and tell me that.  Really???  This is how they do business?  Who can I call?  What can I do?

And to add salt to the wound, Verizon sold me a DSL router 18 months ago and told me service will be available in my area soon.  I’m now stuck with a router I had to buy and no information on how to return it or obtain a refund.  This is all frustrating.

[smith6612]

Unless you're coming off of a different trunk line from your neighbors, it sounds like a simple case of Verizon's database being incorrect about service availability. You would need to have someone put in a ticket for engineering to take a look into the issue and correct the database. Additionally, having the phone agent run an MLT on your line may update some information on the line itself that could give you the green light for DSL, which might be as simple as an old measurement of distance which is something the MLT does measure.

Hang onto the router Verizon gave you. You have after all, purchased it from the way I've read it. For the heck of it you could try hooking it up and seeing if it will even connect.

Lastly, to find out where the DSLAM is, go to a neighbor's home who has DSL and pull up their modem Transceiver statistics. From there, look at their Downstream attenuation, and multiply that by 250. Or, take their upstream attenuation, double it and then multiply it by 250. That will give you their rough line distance in feet to where the source of DSL is coming from. If you know how the cable is routed, you can go for that distance following the cable to find either a CO or a Remote/Pole Mounted DSLAM in the general area. Just take note though, if their attenuation on the downstream is 63.5dB or higher, it basically means that the neighbors may be right at the edge of DSL service. Verizon pushes 768k DSL out to 18,000ft-20,000ft depending on the cabling it has to go through. This doesn't mean it can't be pushed farther with some work.

For a side note on obtaining the Transceiver Statistics: If they are using a Westell modem, go to http://192.168.1.1/ in their browser, choose System Monitoring, Advanced Statistics, and then Transceiver Statistics. For ActionTec modems, go to http://192.168.1.1/ and locate the Status pages. If you are prompted for a User/Pass, try the following:

admin/password
admin/password1
admin/admin
admin/admin1.