Bell Atlantic ISDN Install

[Renard Martin <rmartin@mnsinc.com>]

  Hi folks,
  
  I am going to outline my experience in dealing with Bell Atlantic in 
  Virginia on their residential ISDN service called Infospeed. After weeks 
  of convicing myself that I could afford ISDN, I decided to take the 
  plunge and go for it.
  
  I called the Infospeed 800 number (800-204-7331) and waded through the 
  menus util I got to a live person named Stephainie.  She explained the 
  product to me from soup to nuts as far as installation cost, monthly 
  rates and the awefull usage charges which I complained about as well as 
  all of the T/A that they were offering to customers.  Below is a break 
  down of the charges:
  
  Installation	$151.15 (ouch would have been more but I was converting)
  Inside wiring	$100 (I waived this feature)
  Monthly cost	$31.63
  Usage charge	2c from 7am-7pm M-F, 1c from 7pm-7am M-F,SA,SU
  
  Equipment Price:
  
  USR 128K	$275
  Bitsurfr	$299
  Bitsurfr Pro	$363 (this cam a few days later)
  3Com Impact	$349
  Waverunner	$399
  
  Well after several days of pondering I finally broke down and ordered 
  the service on Friday 1/26/96 at which she told me installation time is 
  usally between 6 to 10 days and that he would give me an istallation 
  date by Tuesday 1/30/96.  On that Tuesday she called with the bad news 
  they did not have enough lines in my area and they would have to put 
  some new ones in and gave me an installation date of Feburary 29th.  
  That really ticked me off but what can you do but wait.
  
  Okay I had a month to wait so this gave me some time to do some homework 
  on ISDN. I still had not decided what T/A I wanted so I did some serious 
  checking around and reading this news group and came to the conclusion 
  that the Bitsurfr Pro was not ready for pimetime and decided on the 3Com 
  Impact. I took 1 week to get the 3Com from Bell. During this time I also 
  bought two books, ISDN for Dummies and How to Get A High Speed 
  Connection to the Internet.  The latter book I found by far was the 
  best.  Notified my ISP (Monumental Networks Systems) that I was going to 
  convert to ISDN and they said great and That I would like the extra 
  speed. They gave tme the ISDN number for MLPPP.  They use Bitsurfr Pros 
  and Adtran.  
  
  I then had to get my mouse moved over to the PS/2 connector on my 
  motherboard so I could free up COM1 on my computer so now I could use 
  both COM ports, one for the analog modem and one for the 3Com Impact.
  I then installed the 3Com on com1 and loaded the phone number and SPID 
  and tested the com connection to the 3Com and everything looked good. 2 
  weeks to go now I had time to make my temp phone line installation 
  permenant so I got some quad wire and made the connection from my 
  existing phone jack and extended it about 20 feet to my computer area.  
  That was pretty easy.
  
  Installation day Feburary 29th.  Got up early that morning and checked 
  my existing modem line which I was converting and the dial tone was gone 
  so I thought that was a good start.  Hooked up the 3Com to the line to 
  get everything ready and waiting for Bell Atlantic to call or knock at 
  the door.  At 10:00am a Bell ISDN Technician called and said everything 
  should be working on my ISDN line.  I looked down at the T/A and the D 
  channel led was off which meant it was insync.  I was a little stunned 
  at first but I went off hook on my pots port and got dial tone.  She 
  said to check it out and if I had any problems to call her back. She 
  gave me all of the contact information so I could reach her back.
  
  I had already created a network connection to my ISP for ISDN under 
  Win95 so I clicked on it and I was connected at MLPPP in about 3 secs.  
  I was tripping because I said that was way to easy. I have not had a 
  problem since.
  
  Last night I wanted to stress my computer so I made a call to the ISP on 
  one B channel and started a large 5 meg download off the net, I then 
  loaded Procomm and made a modem call to a BBS and started a 10 meg 
  download.  I then had them both up on my screen and watched as Procomm 
  and Netscape both download files without a hiccup.  That was impressive.
  
  The moral of the story is do you homework first and you will be 
  surprised at how easy the stuff really is.
  
  Happy until I get the bill.
  
  Renard