I fear the end is nigh...

mt999999

…For my 3 meg ADSL service.

R.I.P.

I’ve held out for this long, so I think I’m just going to call their bluff again, and see if they really shut the DSL down… I’ll bet they just leave the copper to rot on the lines and refuse future repairs. I don’t like the price of internet air, and T-mo doesn’t offer their 5g home internet here.

There might be hope, though… I’ve seen “Glo Fiber business” trucks hanging fiber on lines right in front of my house. I’ve never heard of them and they apparently aren’t offering residential service in town, but their website states they offer $80/mo 400/400 symmetrical fiber business service, which would be tempting.

dave

the end is neigh

They’re not horsing around.

ilikeme1

I am pretty sure Glo Fiber has residential plans that cost less also available.

mt999999

ilikeme1 When I ran my address, their site said “no” for residential, but then prompted me to contact their business team for possible availability. The vans are labeled “Glo Fiber Business”.

Maybe there’s a forum on here for it?

Zenit_IIfx

GloFiber is VA based - a division of Shentel, a small ILEC out of the Shenandoah Valley. GloFiber service is generally solid.
You can easily get a hold of real US based humans in GloFiber or Shentel who can sort this out for you.

Astyanax

mt999999 but then prompted me to contact their business team for possible availability. The vans are labeled “Glo Fiber Business”.

Business fiber is probably $100+/month for 100/100 or some other crazy price.

Somewhat-Reticent

Astyanax So “$80/mo 400/400 symmetrical” would be good?

mt999999

Somewhat-Reticent
$80/mo for 400/400 is the base small business package I saw advertised. Residential svc would be better, but I could swing that much if it becomes available first. The guy from Glofiber called me back and said they are only offering “enterprise level” internet in East Liverpool now, for over $325/mo. Since I’m not technically inclined enough to use that service to set up a community WASP, they put me on a waitlist for smaller plans.

Aside from our “not yet dead” DSL, we signed up for the $20/mo T-Mobile back up 5g internet a while back. The 130 fast GB/mo to eases our suffering, Lol

Donut417

mt999999 I’ll bet they just leave the copper to rot on the lines and refuse future repairs.

Over a decade ago AT&T stopped offering service in my neighborhood. They do offer it in other places of the city, but the CO just isnt close enough for offer DSL reliably I guess, plus it was limited to 6 Mbps at least in my neighborhood at the time. Looking at the FCC broadband map, coverage for DSL has fallen at least in my local community. They do offer Fiber in a newer neighborhood near me but thats about it. Lucky for us we have access to Comcast. AT&T is serious about wanting to kill copper, its not worth it to them to keep the service going.

I do hope they expand Fiber coverage to our community at large, they have wired up a few houses just out side that new neighborhood, but I dont have much faith that will happen.

mt999999 we signed up for the $20/mo T-Mobile back up 5g internet a while back.

Ive heard that the service is decent. I used to be a T Mobile customer, I left because I was not impressed with their network at large, didnt like the price I was paying and being hacked 4 times in a 5 year period makes you loose faith in them fast. I was kinda hoping Verizon would expand its 5G service here, thus far they have not.

mt999999

Well, so long, old friend. About 6 PM yesterday, the DSL/Internet light on my modem turned red, 5 days after my letter said it would shut off. The kicker is, the DSL handshake light is still lit, so I’m thinking the equipment in the CO is still plugged in. No techs report to the local CO anymore, so I guess they’ll just leave the DSLAM plugged in, they just unprovisioned my login, I guess hoping to upsell me to Internet Air.

Hot tech tip: Don’t trust your ISP’s e-mail, folks. AT&T said my att.net address would convert to a free Yahoo account, but e-mails bounce as “undeliverable/account suspended” since the DSL was unprovisioned, and I can’t log into webmail. Per AT&T, someone will reach out in 3-5 days to attempt to recover my e-mail account. Way to rub salt in the wound, guys, I had a lot of things going to that e-mail account.

hex0101

mt999999 One of our locations had XGS-PON green lit in May/June of 2025, and AT&T didn’t turn off the U-Verse VDSL2 Fiber to the Node based DSL until February 10th of 2026. Last approximate time that the Pace 5268ac Gateway was online was at 6:29 am on 2/10/2026. After this, all we got was a “Failed to detect a DSL signal NAD-3305D” error. No more 18 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload Internet service. Account was also canceled entirely, so no more billing would have happened. AT&T also didn’t want the U-Verse TV boxes back, sent a seperate email saying no need to return. Ended up dropping off the equipment to the local recycling center. (considered e-waste)

Also received the notices to migrate, with either 60 or 90 day deadlines. But the service kept working way past 90 days. They just sent new emails with new deadlines to migrate to Fiber before the existing DSL service would be canceled. Eventually it did get canceled and stopped working.

Called up customer service, opened a new account, and had XGS-PON installed. 1st installation appointment was missed, no tech showed up, had to re-schedule.

Only difference is that you have the legacy ADSL vs the faster VDSL2 that we had. AT&T deployed it in around 2010-2011 to the area. I actually found some old ADSL AT&T modem/router combos up in the closet at my parents house which were in/service from before they migrated to U-Verse DSL lol. Wireless G unit from 2Wire, and a Wireless N unit from Westell.

My own neighborhood is getting FTTH built out now so I wonder if the VDSL2 DSLAM will be removed eventually. The old telephone crossbox has a black rope tied around it to keep the doors closed as the latch must have broke. (But yeah many times over the years the crossbox doors were swung wide open). Apparently someone cut the wires inside too a few years ago as my neighbor had a U-Verse outage for a day or two.

Fiber cabinet is brand new and was installed in July, with a new concrete pad. Supports up to 864 homes.
Area will look cleaner if AT&T gets rid of the DSLAM and telephone crossbox. For at least the past 2 years all that has been available is Internet Air.

hex0101

mt999999 Well, so long, old friend. About 6 PM yesterday, the DSL/Internet light on my modem turned red, 5 days after my letter said it would shut off. The kicker is, the DSL handshake light is still lit, so I’m thinking the equipment in the CO is still plugged in

Isn’t this similar to the early 2021 incident of yours, when your legacy ADSL service was offline for 13 days, but you still had sync with the DSLAM, but just had nothing upstream? Came home from work around 5 and the Internet light on the modem was red. You also ended up getting a credit for 14 days worth of service (a day longer then you were out for) due to the extended outage.

As AT&T was trying to find parts for that old DSL network!
But someone finally did and made the repairs!
Maybe you were the last one on the DSLAM lol as the customers nearby migrated to ADSL2+ U-Verse.

From the DSLReports days if I remember
You almost canceled the ADSL haha given the lengh of the outage. Comcast had prepaid internet avaiable at your address. (And still do, 100/20 for $29.99 a month, no equipment fees)

SpottedCat

hex0101 Called up customer service, opened a new account, and had XGS-PON installed. 1st installation appointment was missed, no tech showed up, had to re-schedule.

I’m curious, why would you put up with crappy DSL for so long when XGS-PON was available? I would have ordered that fiber on day zero of availability. Fiber internet is amazing.

mt999999

hex0101 Wow, sharp memory. I do remember that, I actually subscribed to MSN dial up at the time, how miserable that was on 2021 internet. It was cancelled before a month was up Lol. I can’t help but to wonder how many DSL subs they lost for that 2 week outage. I may have been the last one connected up until the end, unless the CO also served areas in town without the 18/1.5 available, “IPBB” as they called it.

The “Internet 18” is still available from resellers like DSL Extreme and Toast.net, but AT&T proper absolutely refused to sell it to me when I called a couple days ago, the irony, haha. I told them to take the defunct DSL off my bill and leave the phone alone. I’m not interested in their $55 wireless Air offer, resellers offer the same for less, if I want high latency.

Comcast is coming next week. Bleh, I’m not happy about it, but I’ve tortured my wife with the slow DSL for the last ₃ years, so she’s excited. I told Death Star that I’m only interested in wired services, so I guess we part ways when they shut down the POTS in my area next September, unless they decide to lay fiber (not likely to happen here). I’ve been testing CallCentric’s VoIP service on a Grandstream ht801 box.

ilikeme1

mt999999 Was Comcast not available until recently or something? I seem to remember that post too. I would have jumped ship from DSL ages ago if I was in your boat and another better option was available.

hex0101

ilikeme1 His DSL was at a good price. And it worked well enough for the basics. OP also paired it with a special router that really helped with bufferbloat and made the 3 Mbps/384 Kbps connection more usable for day to day web browsing. Still was 25x better than dial-up.

Not to mention this stuff is nostalgic, who knows how the old the DSLAM was that was providing OP with service. Still worked reliably well too (and so did the copper plant, but finding a good pair was tricky) Did the DSLAM even use fiber backhaul? T1 or DS3 (45 Mbps) could have been used.

Legacy ADSL
With Bellsouth here in FL these were the choices back in the day:
768 Kbps / 128 Kbps
1.5 Mbps / 256 Kbps
3 Mbps / 384 Kbps
6 Mbps / 512 Kbps (and this speed tier was also unrestricted so you could pull whatever your max ADSL line rate was if I recall, however AT&T may have disabled this feature after the Bellsouth acquisition)

hex0101

SpottedCat I’m curious, why would you put up with crappy DSL for so long when XGS-PON was available? I would have ordered that fiber on day zero of availability. Fiber internet is amazing.

Haha, totally valid question!

Me too, but this was not my primary residence. It was actually a relatives house and she passed away unfortunately. Location is not very close by so scheduling the fiber installation wasn’t easy. It is installed now though and has been for 6 months, and the BGW320 hasn’t needed a single reboot. It is just useful to have an Internet connection at the home for accessing survalience video remotely, for when I or others come and visit, and for streaming on the TV’s, etc.

Trust me if this was my primary residence I wouldn’t have even still been with AT&T for DSL, would have jumped ship to Comcast. The mid-split upgrades were done in March of 2024 and were actually done overnight between 12-6 am. AT&T began the fiber deployment process in early 2025. But for basic Internet use, some people are not bothered by 18/1.5 speeds. (Overprovisioned to 22/2.2)
Everyone else around on the street had access to 25 Mbps. The copper telephone drop was just so long because of how the cable traveled and as a result the the max link rate couldn’t support 25 Mbps, if I had to guess this was why Internet 18 was the fastest DSL option avaiable. Underground utilities.

Astyanax

mt999999 Hot tech tip: Don’t trust your ISP’s e-mail, folks.

I would’ve thought most users of this site/DSLR refugees already knew that. 😉

mt999999 AT&T said my att.net address would convert to a free Yahoo account, but e-mails bounce as “undeliverable/account suspended” since the DSL was unprovisioned, and I can’t log into webmail. Per AT&T, someone will reach out in 3-5 days to attempt to recover my e-mail account.

They said they were going to “convert” the account for you? LOL!

When I got their fiber I had to set it up on Yahoo!. It wasn’t too big of a deal but I didn’t have any old emails I was going to lose. Can you log in to the old account and have it forward emails to another address?

mt999999

Astyanax Every web forum I read said that since Yahoo now hosts AT&T e-mail, the account would stay open post-dsl, and convert to a “free” Yahoo account, I guess add webmail ads and remove unlimited server storage. Maybe since I ignored the internet migration letter they just disabled my e-mail as collateral damage with my DSL, I don’t know. I have other e-mail accounts, but I did make use of the ATT mail thinking it would carry on. It won’t allow me to log in, just a generic error message on webmail, and “bad password” when Thunderbird tries to fetch mail.